Recently, I discovered an incredible pastry-shop in Paris, Pierre Hermé, where you can try some interesting flavored macarons, such as caramel with fleur de sel , passion fruit with chocolate or even rose petal cream.

(Macarons are French, meringue-like cookies made with almond flour – sometimes called luxembourgers - while Macaroons are cookies made with coconut)

Pierre Hermé is an artist - an artist of pastry making - and he is known for his innovative recipes. He began his apprenticeship at Gaston Lenôtre at the age of 14, where he discovered his passion for pastry making.

French people are well known for their Luxury taste, and this brand new concept phone is another proof of just that !

MobiFrance has recently partnered up with Sony Ericsson to develop a concept cell called the French Luxury. The FL is designed to commemorate France’s Independence Day (July 14) by bearing a strong resemblance to the Eiffel Tower, the most recognizable French landmark.

The phone is equipped with a full touchscreen and a 7.2 mega pixels camera. It can stand like a tower and has speakers on the sides. It supports multimedia functions including video and also features vibration mode.
(No word on pricing and availability yet.)

A nice souvenir from Paris though, more glamourous than any golden Eiffel Tower made In China!

One of the world’s most beautiful city skylines could be changed dramatically after a ban on high-rise buildings in Paris was scrapped last week.

The Paris city council voted Tuesday to consider erecting tall buildings on the rim of this historically low-rise capital. Plans to build towers of up to 220m at six sites in the French capital will now go to public consultation. They will contain shops, offices and childcare centres.

Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoe also wants new blocks of flats to counter a housing shortage.

The ban on buildings exceeding 40m was introduced in 1977. Many believed that the 350m Eiffel Tower should be the only building dominating the skyline.
Building height limits have changed little in Paris since Baron Haussmann redesigned the city during the mid-19th century, with caps now at 121 feet.

Only a handful of exceptions have been made for high-rise projects in recent decades
The new decision means that six new sites, under consideration for completion between 2012 and 2014, could host buildings reaching as high as 656 feet, or a little under two-thirds the height of the Eiffel Tower.

The city is currently home to only a scattering of towers, notably including the Montparnasse Tower, which, at 690 feet, stirred controversy when it was built in 1972 and is still considered an eyesore by many Parisians today.
Mr Delanoe insisted the new rules would not blight Paris, saying the administration would not repeat the mistakes of the past.

Via heraldsun/npr

The saga of world’s most expensive house started over at luxuo with Updown Court, the most expensive mansion in the world and the100 Million Dollars Trump’s Palm Beach Mansion.

As a matter of fact, one of our reader, who left a comment, was right : some villas on the French Riviera might be even more expensive !

Various sources said Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and his girlfriend Daria Zhukova have just bought a home in France for $500 million. The home in question, La Leopolda, is an elaborate villa located on the French Riviera… which has become the world’s most expensive house !

British Airways, Europe’s third-largest flag carrier, on Wednesday said it is going to buy the French all-business airline l’Avion for 54 million pounds ($107 million) as it steps up efforts to take advantage of the recent liberalization of transatlantic travel.

The privately owned airline flies two Boeing 757 aircraft with 90 seats each between Paris and New York. L’Avion has flown 65,000 passengers since its January 2007 launch.

The deal, which includes £26m of net cash on L’Avion’s balance sheet, will allow OpenSkies to raise its Paris Orly-New York flights to three per day. Both carriers use reconfigured Boeing 757 aircraft.

The idea behind Open Skies was to capitalize on the deregulation of traffic between the U.S. and Europe that took effect at the end of March. Until then, BA couldn’t offer direct flights from Paris to the U.S.

L’Avion is the sole survivor of the four all-business class airlines launched in recent years following the collapse of Maxjet, Eos and Silverjet. But given oil at around $140 a barrel, industry observers doubted that l’Avion ever turned a profit.

BA plans to integrate L’Avion under the OpenSkies brand. L’Avion’s aircraft have 90 seats in a single-class cabin, while OpenSkies has 82 seats in three classes : 24 seats that convert into beds, 28 in premium economy and 30 in economy making it closer to the l’Avion model than traditional British Airways flights.

A seal of the Chinese emperor Kangxi sold at auction in the southern French city Toulouse for 4.7 million Euros (USD 7.2 million), a world record price for such an object, the sale`s organisers said on Saturday.

It is a world record for a seal and a European record for a Chinese object. It was bought by an unnamed buyer or buyers from China bidding by telephone.

The three kilogram (six-and-a-half pound) beige soapstone seal was one of 130 personal seals used by the emperor Kangxi, who ruled between 1662 and 1722.