I have news: Next month, I’m opening a brick and mortar cabinet of curiosities in Paris. It’s only been a few months in the making – a rather spontaneous decision spurred by the lease on...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2024/05/03/messy-nessys-cabinet-a-little-shop-in-paris/
Once upon a time, you could buy a ticket from London to Calcutta for less than the cost of a ticket from Paris to Rome. The year was 1957, baby boomers were still teenagers on the loose and flo...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2024/05/03/all-aboard-the-giant-hippie-bus-from-london-to-calcutta/
With their exquisite facades in pastel shades, replete with balconies, pointed gables and elaborate monograms, the Vohrawad mansions are a wonder to behold. One could easily be forgiven for ass...
In the dappled light coming through the trees, a jovial bohemian crowd have gathered to dance and dally at the Moulin de la Galette, one of the many windmills that originally stood at the north...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2021/10/20/postcards-from-the-last-windmill-in-paris/
We’re constantly looking for untapped corners of the globe. The road less travelled. Proof that tourism hasn’t conquered everything. Today that search took us to the Altai Mountains, in the...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2021/03/04/some-of-natures-best-work-is-hidden-away-in-siberia/
Ah, la douce France! Cobblestone streets and cafés lost in time, quaint little ancient villages surrounded by vineyards, heart-achingly beautiful architecture and skylines, just like you’ve ...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2020/05/13/france-is-that-really-you/
Their’s is a love of strange and beautiful proportion. The kind measured in porcelain, peanut-sized dolls, and antiqued oysters as big as your face. “It’s hard to imagine a time when we�...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2018/09/12/digging-for-treasure-and-love-in-new-york-city/
Of the 16 million tourists that visit Florence on average per year, I wonder how many of them walk by the old palazzos without ever noticing their most interesting little secret hiding in plain...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2018/05/22/dont-miss-the-miniature-wine-windows-of-florence/
If a French chateau is a little out of your vacation budget, why not consider a cave house? Unforgettably unique and even more historic, the “troglodyte” homes of France; those ancient rock...
Our dream treasure hunt? One that involves an international quest for free whiskey and a $10,000 prize, which was precisely the case in the Summer of 1967. In one of cleverest marketing ploys o...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2018/02/02/theres-a-51-year-old-whiskey-treasure-hunt-still-going-on/
Parisians often talk about the great travesty that was the loss of Les Halles, a legendary food market in the heart of Paris, fondly referred to as “the belly of Paris”, a seemingly indestr...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2017/10/05/searching-for-a-lost-wine-village-in-paris/
A few years ago, a worldly friend who’s always in the know posted something to her Facebook wall that went something like this: Mudlarking on the Thames is the best way to spend a Sunday morn...
The Montmartre annual wine harvest has been a festive Parisian tradition since 1934, but we’ve come across some photographs from the 1950s that reveal a time in the vineyard’s history w...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2016/01/27/can-can-dancing-in-the-paris-vineyard/
In 2023, the global shampoo market had an estimated value of $32 billion. But deep in the mountains of southern China’s Guangxi province, the women of Huangluo Village won’t be contributing...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2015/11/05/the-chinese-village-of-long-haired-rapunzels/
La Seine, immortalized by artists and adored by lovers dangling their feet over the quay, harbours a dark secret. Under the fifth and thirteenth arrondissements grumbles la Bièvre, the Seine�...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2013/12/09/hunting-the-lost-river-of-paris/
Paris and New York: both have islands, both have Statues of Liberty, crazy people on the metro, and unbeknownst to most, they both have parks in the sky. Until a little while ago, I was under t...
https://www.messynessychic.com/2012/07/06/paris-secret-park-in-the-sky-the-original-high-line/