to cities around the world
July is almost upon us: ’tis the season for strawberries, summer operas, fashion shows, and Wimbledon is back after last year’s unprecedented hiatus. But in Hong Kong, the weather is stormy, the mood is grey, the summer local fruit is more lychee than strawberry (and yes some lychees are grown locally … you may even find Read more
The season for the grass has arrived even if there may still be pretty pink blossoms in some places. The grass feels greener in this year when we feel extra joy about roaming the outdoors. What this means, if you are in London, is that the Wimbledon tennis season is upon us. But wait, rumours are that Read more
Many of our friends around the world – perhaps the luckier ones – are spending the month of May on vaccinations and the related worrying. Our Parisien friends in the meantime have been getting onto their bikes (or “vélos”). The talk-of-the-town in recent months have been about vélo – the French word for bikes – being Read more
We here at Madeleine’s love walking cities – whether it’s travelling “in”, “through” or “across” those urban spaces! In fact, we think meandering one’s way across a city and running the risk of getting lost (whether armed with maps or not) is an art that needs to be recovered and rediscovered! In this year where Read more
IV. Beijingers and Tokyoites: walkers Despite the low cycling statistics for two of the most famous cities, Paris and London, all is not lost. There are other noteworthy trends and possibilities, including an ultra-high 46% walking modal share for Paris and almost 30% for London, according to Deloitte’s City Mobility Index. In fact, we find Read more
What is your ideal city to live in? Well, it might be a good idea to start with the daily hassle of “going to” and “getting home from” work. Despite this being an unusual year when for months many of us have simply “gone to work” in our home office or a corner of the Read more
As cities are coming back to life with summer drawing to a close and Covid restrictions relaxing …we urbanites and city-dwellers are looking forward to some of the magic that cities offer … chance meetings in the street, lazing at kerb-side cafe tables looking into the streetscape, accidental tableside conversations that spark an idea, chit-chats Read more
In this month of June when Parisians are starting to get comfortable again with the idea of sitting in a café (on my count, we are on the fourth weekend of the city’s “return to life” even if with restraint?) and enjoying the beautiful weather (“savor more than coffee”, as the New York Times put Read more
One of the most astounding things about this ultra-urban city of Hong Kong is that there are still some tiny and remote villages that are not accessible by vehicles, are mainly populated by village houses, and rather untouched by urbanism, and many of these are in Sai Kung, a large area in the Northeastern part Read more
[An early April update: Hong Kong Museum of Art has opened up some of its multimedia collections online in its virtually@HKMoA initiative while the museum is itself still closed to public access.] We at Madeleine’s have been spending time in a city where there is definitely a siege-like feel: shops have shorter hours, office-workers are working Read more