Bits from 2008 (page 3)

Don't know about you, but I've always thought Italy was a bit of a scam as far as food is concerned. You go there, you eat, you get exited - ecstatic even, you scribble the names of your new favorite dishes on any and every scrap of paper, you bring the scraps home, you go to your local Italian restaurant and then.. you realize it's just really not the same. At all.

While I can't offer a real solution to this, I might be able to point you to somebody who can, at least when it comes to pasta dishes and Cucina bolognese in general. This is not one person but rather a group of individuals who run a small tourist-friendly cooking school called "La Vecchia Scuola Bolognese" (Bologna's Old School)...

Read the rest of: "Pasta Bolognese, Old School"»

If you're the type who just can't leave their work behind, even on vacation, Valencia may be the right place for you. Since July, the municipal government is running WiFi access points on two of the city's beaches - El Cabanyal and La Malvarrosa...

Read the rest of: "Valencia Beaches Going Wireless"»

Back in July, Apple opened a flagship store in Montreal of which yours truly has already had an opportunity to be a customer.

The store is ninth in the list of Apple's flagship stores world-wide (the others are in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, London, Tokyo, Osaka and New York) and the first of the kind in Canada...

Read the rest of: "Apple Opens Montreal Flagship Store"»

A few weeks ago, a round of renovations was completed at the de Liceu metro station (línea 3) in the Rambla, reported local transportation authority, TMB. All in all, four halls and two platforms were given a complete make-over at a total cost of 2.5 million euro. This phase of renovations took one year...

Read the rest of: "De Liceu Station Renovated"»

Flying high on the success of Vélib, a bike-rental program that turned one year old in July, Paris is thinking about launching another effort, dubbed Autolib. According to a report by the Associated Press, this program will launch by early 2010 with a fleet of 4,000 electric cars (half of them reserved for areas outside the Périphérique) and will allow anybody to quickly rent a car from one of 700 planned stations and drop them off at any other...

Read the rest of: "You Liked Vélib? Then You'll Love Autolib!"»

Montreal will soon get its own city-wide bike-rental system clearly modeled after Paris' Velib. It will work almost exactly the same way as Vélib: you pick up your bike from any of the stations, pay at the station or simply swipe a card, use your bike and return it to any station you deem convenient.

The only (minor) problem is, the system is still to be named. So, the city is asking everyone's opinion. Here are the options: BIXI, Bycik, MontVélo, VélO2 and VillaVélo...

Read the rest of: "Montreal Bike Rental System Looking For Name"»

Groupe Moniteur is a French company which helps establish links between the construction & development industries and the communities in which they work. They are also the owner of Librairie Le Moniteur - a highly specialized bookstore a stone's throw away from the Jardin du Luxembourg and Théâtre du Odeon.

Filled with books on architecture, urbanism, landscaping and interior design, Librairie Le Moniteur is one the largest specialized bookstores in Paris (and certainly the largest bookstore on the topic that I've seen)...

Read the rest of: "Le Moniteur Bookstore"»

The Montreal Jazz Festival 2008 has just finished and the city is already fevereshly preparing for the 2009 edition. You might think this is an overstatement - after all, there's almost a year left! But in fact, in this short year, one of the most important concert spaces, the plaza between Place des Arts and Rue de Bleury will have to be completely redone. The models and renderings for the new Place des Festivals were made public a few days ago and the city's mayor took the opportunity to assure everybody the project is "on schedule, on budget"...

Read the rest of: "Montreal to Get New Plaza in 2009"»