Now is the month of Maying: walking, cycling, secret gardens, and velo being an anagram of love …

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

Rethinking cities #3 – the daily commute part II: Beijing, Tokyo, Hong Kong

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

Dreaming of a Tokyo Christmas

We at Madeleine’s did entertain the possibility of spending Christmas in Tokyo …. But quarantine restrictions still made us hesitate … But, we are dreaming about it …. Tokyo has some wonderful Christmas markets and Christmas fairs as well as spectacular winter illuminations befitting its status as a great city … In this year of Read more

Rethinking cities #1: Ommmm in Paris, the 15-minute commute in Milan, and Amsterdam in a doughnut

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

Love of maps, making globes, and the art of getting lost

(Thank you @marjanblan for use of this image; we’ve called it the “geometric art map of the world”.) In this year when it’s so difficult to travel, we are reminded of these things called maps.  In fact, we are crazy about maps, and in that spirit, are sharing “Dancing with the spirit of Marco Polo”, a Read more