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Check out some of our favorite places to celebrate Christmas and New Year's Eve, both near and far. These videos and book excerpts will get you into the spirit faster than you can say "Auld Lang Syne."

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While wandering the streets of Paris, keeping an eye on what's underfoot is crucial to avoid the presents left by the impressive canine population—which, incidentally, is oftentimes dressed more fashionably than I during chillier weather. Watching where you step in Paris serves more purpose than simply avoiding these delightful gifts, though—across Paris, scattered medallions pepper the city sidewalks. My favorites are the Arago series, a set of around 130 medallions placed along the Paris Meridian. The set is named for François Arago, the astronomer who accurately calculated the line, which for many years rivaled the Greenwich Meridian for internationally-recognized status as the prime meridian.  My first year in Paris, I was quite excited to discover not just one, but two Arago medallions right by my house in the Cité U! That meant I lived alongside a historically-important meridian, which I thought was pretty cool.

Lately, I’ve discovered another set of medallions with an interesting story behind them. Everyone who knows Paris knows about the Seine—but have you ever heard of la Bièvre? This was a second river, one that used to run through the 13th and fifth arrondissements and ultimately fed into the Seine. However, since 1912, the river has been covered up within the city, as it became horribly polluted and unsanitary as the city industrialized during the 1800s.
In 2001, a project was proposed to uncover and restore the river in a few sites in Paris. However, when the project outline was presented with its budget, which was estimated at over 100 million euro, the French population reconsidered the plan. The architect Benoît Jullien proposed another idea, and in 2008 a set of medallions and markers were placed around Paris to mark the path of la Bièvre. So far, I’ve spotted markers both along the path of the river as it stands today, and also along paths where it used to lead, including to a chic neighborhood called Le Marais and along the bras unique. Paris is not only rich in history readily apparent on the streets, but also in stories hidden below your feet.

Vaux-le-Vicomte was once the site of a spectacular party, the story of which has lived on over the centuries not so much for the great wine or rocking string quartets, but rather for the fate the host suffered shortly after the party at the hands of one distinguished guest. The host was Nicolas Fouquet and this guest none other than Louis XIV. The party was held 350 years ago in 1661, on an August night probably very much like the one when I visited.

Backtrack a few years: the year was 1648 and, not terribly unlike today, the state treasury of France had collapsed. A few years later, in 1653, Cardinal Mazarin appointed Nicolas Fouquet financial secretary in response. The position suited Fouquet, who came from a wealthy family of political advisors and who was both ambitious and intelligent, very well. Unfortunately, Cardinal Mazarin, who was both First Minister and godfather of the king, was a greedy man in a powerful position, and made Fouquet's work difficult.

Upon Cardinal Mazarin's death in 1661, the year of the aforementioned party, the crown still laid in financial disarray. Mazarin's private secretary, Colbert, began planting seeds of suspicion about Fouquet with the king after being threatened by the financial secretary. By May, the king was determined to be rid of Fouquet. Slyly, the king masked his intentions and threw Fouquet off by announcing he would visit Fouquet's château, Vaux-le-Vicomte.

Here's where the party comes in. Of it, Voltaire wrote, "On August 17 at 6 in the evening, Fouquet was king of France; at 2 in the morning, he was nobody." In fact, Fouquet's arrest came three weeks later as the buzz about his party was likely just dulling down. His trial for embezzlement lasted three years; however, despite Colbert's scheming, he could not be proven guilty. The judges ruled for Fouquet to be banished, a ruling that effectively functioned as an acquittal.

In the only instance of interference of this kind in French history, the king stepped in to harshen his sentence—having urged the judges to give the death penalty—and ordered Fouquet jailed for life. Prison for the rich at the time operated differently than it does today, with each wealthy prisoner getting his own manservant. As Fouquet's manservant often fell ill (if life for the servants in the old days wasn't a tough deal already, imagine having to be a servant in jail), he received special permission to have an additional prisoner serve him: the legendary Man in the Iron Mask, who was housed in the same prison at the time. The identity of the Man in the Iron Mask is still unknown, although many intriguing theories abound, including the idea that he was the true father of Louis XIV. Fouquet remained in prison until his death in 1680.

Fouquet's castle, an inspiration for Versailles, stands to this day as a monument to his short-lived glory. These days, Vaux-le-Vicomte is open to the public, accessible by RER or train (RER D, station: Melun) followed by a bus to the château. On the first and third Saturdays of the month, the castle reopens at 8pm, lit by thousands of candles for an evening visit that concludes in a fireworks show at 11pm. One word: enchanting.

Hey Let's Go fans! We're in the business of connecting travelers to all the information they could possibly need to enjoy themselves while abroad. To that end, we've partnered with with our fellow travel bloggers at Pause the Moment.

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Free at last, free at last, merci Dieu j'ai liberté! And just in time for the 14th of July, France's Bastille Day. Celebrating liberty wil be so much sweeter knowing that I actually have it. 4th of July here was a slight let down... it's only a matter of time before you can't carry the weight of US any longer—we are a pretty overweight country. I was told by elderly friends (ok, the retired expats that I drink with during happy hour) that before 9/11 the American Embassy would open up and everyone with a blue passport (or English/South African anglophones) would crowd on the roofs, shoot off fireworks, and generally enjoy beverages. Those were the days. Now I'm pretty sure you would be shot on the spot for approaching the embassy with fireworks. At least in France the government still humbles itself to the level of disgruntled revolutionaries in the spirit of communal celebration.

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This past week family members started to pour into CDG to start their vacations (which I'm just about to join after finishing these blogs) and Sunday marked my grandparents departure from Paris in a rental car. One small issue. Or maybe a lot of them. Driving in Paris is hard, and my grandparents can't speak French. Finding traffic lights alone has been a struggle for me, but with persistance and many, many horns honked at me on my scooter, I mastered their locations as I have every late night bar and police checkpoint (those may or may not be mutually exclusive). In anyway, I was hired as the cheuffeur out to Tours (a city that I had previously been to earlier this week). Apart from waking up at the ungodly hour of 9am after a Saturday night and mini-celebration of completion of work, the drive wasn't too bad. I also had to make a couple stops at some slightly out-of-reach châteaux, which provided some break time and the slight urge to want to hurl myself off of the towers as to never see any more châteaux ever again (that is, unless I'm living in one because my extremely wealthy fiancée happened to aquire it after her father, the distant relative of the former Duke of Orléans passed away).

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