Author: Diana

An Honest Yabla Review (2021)

Published by Diana

My Yabla review: I love Yabla. I’ve used Yabla for three years, after I discovered it while looking for a way to practice my oral comprehension of French. I can read reasonably well, and speak at least competently enough to express my less-complicated thoughts, but I am hopeless at understanding people when they speak French. Enter, Yabla. (Note: This Yabla review focuses on Yabla French, though I imagine it’s more or less the same for each of the languages Yabla offers.) So What Is Yabla? Yabla is a language-learning system that uses a selection of game-like programs to increase oral comprehension, vocabulary, and written ability. My favorite — the one I use 99.9% of the time — is Scribe. The concept is simple: Every week, Yabla publishes a bunch of new videos — a mix of news reports, music videos, cartoon segments, and original material made by Yabla itself. (The original material is excellent — especially the videos by Lionel (Lionel the First, though Lionel the Second is also great, something other Yabla French users will …

12 Excellent French Makers on Etsy

Published by Diana

Looking for the best French gifts on Etsy? Voilà. While I’ve been an Etsy shopkeeper for forever, I’ve only recently become more of an Etsy shopper, and I’ve bought more excellent stuff on Etsy this year than anywhere else. (Like: vintage maps of Europe, an Animal Crossing-themed print for a friend, and a vinyl Bruce Springsteen sticker, because for 2021 I decided to be the sort of person who cares a lot about stickers.) A couple quick things, as we begin our search for the best French gifts on Etsy (noting: no vintage, no clothing, as those are separate searches!!). As someone who ships from France to the U.S. literally all the time, it’s actually very straightforward and fast: Look for shipment via service called Colissimo, which is the national post carrier’s shipping plan. From Paris to the U.S. it can take as few as four days, though usually it’s closer to seven. And there shouldn’t be customs charges for any of these products (as they’re under the price that would incur them.) Keep an …

The 21 Most Beautiful Paris Apartment Interiors on Instagram

Published by Diana

These are the 21 most beautiful Paris apartment interiors on Instagram — which, all things being equal, is a pretty good place to look for them. Note: These get increasingly more fantastical as we go on, so while we start with this lovely, regular-person space — with the nice cat sleeping on the nice rattan chair — we definitely do conclude with, for example, the Hotel de Soubise (the construction of which was partially funded by an affair with Louis XIV) and additional castle-like spaces. The good thing about Paris apartments that not everyone knows is that (thank you, Communist Party) rents are kept down pretty assiduously by law — so while Paris rents are expensive by French standards, they are a fraction of what they’d be in, say, San Francisco or London. Dream big! Best Cozy Corner in History (@m.art.ion) Can you even? Those plants, that cat, all that rattan? Best Giant Gilded Mirror in the Service of Holiday Cheer (@jackiekaiellis) Fact: A gilded mirror is worth having all year round, but possibly especially …

I Sort of Dated an Emily in Paris-style Gabriel, and Actually, It Was Pretty Terrible

Published by Diana

I didn’t meet Francois in my building, like Emily met Gabriel, her not-single chef: I met Francois, my not-single restaurateur, in an even cuter way: His parents sold me a vintage desk lamp at a garage sale. The desk lamp was adorable, and his parents, equally so. Along with the lamp, they gave me a card for their son’s restaurant, which happened to be a 10-minute walk from my apartment. “Stop by!” they said, in their perfect English. “Talk to Francois!” I did. He looked not like Lucas Bravo but like Eddie Redmayne, which for me, was a win. I told him to thank his parents for the lamp. He gave me a basket of something like cheese biscuits(?). He told me to let him know if I had any problems with the lamp — so when it stopped working a week later, I emailed him. This time, instead of meeting at the restaurant, we met at the apartment above his restaurant. I looked for any signs of a partner — he was just moving …

What It’s Like to Travel to Paris Right Now (October 2020)

Published by Diana

Wondering what it’s like to travel to Paris right now? I would say: not great. Last week, I traveled from New Jersey to Paris. I either had to come back or give up my residency visa, which expired the day after I arrived — believe me, I wanted to stay where I was. Here, then, is how I made it to France: Step #1: The groundwork I called around to clinics near me — some would only offer tests to those who believed they’d been exposed to someone with covid. Most, though, could only offer a hazy timeframe of “2-4 days” for the results, which wouldn’t work. The good news, I guess, was that these tests were all free — but since I didn’t want to (a) miss my flight or (b) show up in France after my visa expired, I couldn’t take the risk. It took a couple weeks of sifting around the internet — I have no idea why this wasn’t easier to find — I saw a recommendation for Excell on, of …

How Can I Decorate My Home Like a Parisian?

Published by Diana

If you’ve ever wondered: How can I decorate my home like a Parisian? I have good news: It’s easier than it looks. It’s true that Paris apartments often have beautiful bones — it’s a small city, with much century-old housing stock (though plenty of new as well). In general, though, it’s not that hard to find a beautiful apartment with beautiful moldings and parquet floors. That said, a Parisian apartment can be procured the old-fashioned American way: by buying it. Parquet floors can be laid by hand. Oil portraits can be purchased on Etsy or Selency. A grand, antique mirror is only as far as 1st Dibs. Generally, I think that there’s a native way of styling apartment that’s unique to wherever you are — a Brooklyn apartment wants to be a Brooklyn apartment while a Miami apartment wants to be a Miami apartment, and ditto in San Antonio or Seattle: All of these places have different amounts of sunlight, sun intensity, color temperature, and local vintage stock. In that sense, I’d say that if you’re …

Jeanne Damas Sunglasses: 21 Perfect Pairs

Published by Diana

Jeanne Damas sunglasses! There’s no easier way to French style than finding your own best take on the uber-influencer’s lunettes. If you haven’t bought her book — In Paris: 20 Women on Life in the City of Light — it belongs on the same francophilic bookshelf as How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are. If you are looking for near-daily photos from what seems like an perpetually stylish vacation in the South of France, you will absolutely want to follow her on Instagram. And if you are interested in taking a look at her style — a primer on how to do that Frenchy-styley thing — you are bienvenue. You might want to begin with a wider look at her style — cropped sweaters! wide-legged denim! straw bags! — here. You may be most interested in her shoes (these are my 19 favorites), which seem to alternate between espadrilles (I mentioned the neverending vacations???), designer heels, and one pair of go-to booties. Or! You may be most interested in her wide array of sunglasses, in which …

If You’ve Been Sad About the State of the World/Country/Etc., The DNC Roll Call Is the Medicine You Need

Published by Diana

The DNC roll call is wonderful. We are in for it, these next 76 days: If it’s not the pandemic or the murder hornets or the fire-nadoes or the sharks or the miserable inability of approximately 43% of this country to channel any sort of empathy or the spotted lanternflies or the assault on our arctic refuges or the assault on our post offices or the actual assaults on actual people by other people, sworn to protect them — well, if it’s not any of that, it’ll be something else. Myriad other disasters surely await us, in the double-overtime run-up to what could very well be lights-out, in many ways that matter, for this young nation of ours. It is a bitter pill to swallow, all that, but there is a remedy, and it is the DNC Roll Call. It is wonderfully homemade. It is the hand-sewn quilt that emerges after decades of Pottery Barn chenille throws. It is your grandmother’s favorite soup after years of Olive Garden minestrone. Mics are visible in essentially all of the …

The Best Luxury Paris Apartments

Published by Diana

There are plenty to choose from — but these are in my humble opinion the best luxury Paris apartments. And their chandeliers. And gilded mirrors. And parquet floors. And more. One good thing about Paris is that thanks to stringent rent controls, it’s not impossible to find an apartment there for under $1000 a month. Will it have an elevator? Oh mais non. Will it be bigger than a bed? Only maybe. Will you need to use a communal bathroom in the hallway? Probably not, but I’ve seen it. Of course, on the absolute other side of this equation: No one knows how to do grand apartment interiors quite like them. Here, a selection of the best Paris luxury apartments and their interiors — some, but not all, owned by a billionaire. Of all them, the thing I want most is Morgane Sézalory’s tan leather couch: Mon dieu! Et so on. For more — and more accessible, and no less creative — Paris apartment interiors, see this piece on the 19 Things I Learned About …

How to Move to France

Published by Diana

If you’ve ever dreamed of moving to France, I want you to know: You can do it. It’s the question I get most often (uh, besides whether or not French guys cheat): How did you move to France? There are a million ways to do it, but I only know mine — and it’s worth talking about, because it’s the easiest (in some ways). When I first went to Paris, I only expected to go for six weeks. Then I fell in love with my Airbnb host. (LOL, but true.) Going back to New York was no longer an option. But as an American, I couldn’t stay in the Schengen Zone for more than 90 days out of any 180. Unless. In my case, I needed a visa: a long-term visitor’s visa. For this, you need a bunch of stuff — but really only two things: – You need to swear you won’t work in France. What you do outside of France, they don’t care about. My professional life is conducted entirely in the U.S. I have a French bank account, …