the main character goes to Paris to buy a Christian Dior dress, and meets one of the models and quickly becomes her friend... she drives this great choice for a movie car, a drop top Renault Caravelle
Just my opinion, but the ADORABLE supporting actress looks a bit like Audrey Hepburn
Construction was started in 1852 under the Empire of Napoléon III and Baron Haussmann, the influential civic planner. The 20th century sprawl of Paris beyond the Petite Ceinture and the success of the Métro eventually made the circular railway obsolete.
Long before the current courier competitions and other Bike Messengers World Championships, Parisians had organised bicycle delivery races, such as the "Brassard des Estafettes" in 1897, the Criterium des Messageries Hachette or the Paris-Versailles races in tricycles.
But the most popular is the the Newspaper Carriers' Criterium which began in 1926, and the Tour de Paris or the Cyclo-Porters' Criterium in 1937
These races were organized with the help of newspaper publishing houses and courier companies
Each print media outlet assembled its own team by mixing their couriers with some former professional road champions and Belgian riders.
Many porters were amateur or semi-professional racers who used their jobs for training, so it was natural to organize a race of the porters every year.
Porters were paid per trip, and they rode so fast that they made more money than the board members of the newspapers for which they worked.
The race was a big deal, with the main roads of Paris closed off for the event. The newspapers reported in great detail, as they would of a Tour de France stage.
The course started in the newspaper quarter of Paris, on rue Montmartre, went around the Boulevards Extérieurs, passing through eight checkpoints, delivery and exchange of the 33 lb load of newspapers, before climbing the hill of Montmartre, and arrival at the top of rue Lepic.
At the half-way point, they had to exchange their load for another pack of newspapers. Much of the course went over cobblestones, and not all were as smooth as the ones in the photo above.
These races took place in the middle of winter - sometimes in the snow - in February, and later in November. Three main categories: Men, Women and Disabled, but also Veterans and also a team ranking.
These still exist in messenger circles although with fake packages.
Cycle Messenger World Champs, North American Cycle Courier Champs, European Cycle Messenger Champs, and the Cargobike Alleycat in Paris
French farmers, who have been blockading Paris with their tractors for the past week to protest the economic crisis facing the country’s agricultural sector, and the Jan 26th govt cut of the agricultural diesel fuel subsidy, have found an unlikely hero in Jeremy Clarkson.
As of Tuesday morning, all major highways into Paris were blocked by some 500 tractors and similar operations were underway around other key French cities. Three separate convoys were also attempting to blockade the Rungis wholesale food market south of Paris which is the source of fresh food for the French capital.
French farmers say their sector is on the brink of collapse as incomes fall due to rising environmental regulations, red tape and competition from cheaper imports, all issues Clarkson has talked about in his show in relation to British farming.
“We need one of our French celebrities to do the same thing as Jeremy Clarkson in Amazon Prime Series Clarkson’s Farm,” protesting French farmer Robi Leduc told a reporter
In Belgium, farmers angry with EU environmental policies and cheap imports, plan to block access roads to the Zeebrugge container port in Belgium from Tuesday.
Since 2022, farmers in northern (the Netherlands, Germany), southern (Italy) and eastern Europe (Poland, Romania, and Lithuania) have been setting up shop outside government quarters and camping tractors and forestry trucks on main roads.
The French protests follow similar action in other European countries, including Germany and Poland, ahead of European Parliament elections in June in which the far right, for whom farmers represent a growing constituency, is seen making gains.
French farmers have vowed to blockade the Paris region until their demands are met, keeping up the pressure ahead of an extraordinary European summit on 1 February. On Wednesday, over one hundred roads were blocked and 10,000 people demonstrating across the country, according to the French interior ministry. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, just named to lead the government, is grappling with his first crisis, with grievances focused on new environmental norms, fuel taxes, free trade and wages.
In France, the government, wary of seeing the protests escalate and with an eye on the European elections, has already dropped plans to gradually reduce subsidies on agricultural diesel and promised to ease environmental regulations.
In 1900, the Orleans railway company transformed a plot of land on the banks of Paris' Seine River into the Gare d'Orsay (“Orsay Station”).
Formerly occupied by the Palais d'Orsay—a building erected under Napoleon and destroyed in 1871 by the Paris Commune, a radical and revolutionary government—this centrally located site was the perfect place to build a bustling train station.
Designed by French architects Émile Bénard, Victor Laloux, and Lucien Magne during Paris' Belle Époque, the Gare d'Orsay paired a beautiful Beaux-Arts aesthetic with top-of-the-line technologies. These included elevators and escalators, luggage ramps, and electrified tracks. Given its modernity, the station's debut was planned to coincide with the 1900 Paris Exposition. This world's fair was held to highlight the innovations and inventions that were transforming the world at the turn of the century.
Following this event, the Gare d'Orsay served as the terminus for railways out of southwestern France for nearly four decades.
By 1939, however, its platforms proved to be too short for newer, longer trains, and it gradually stopped operating as a train station.
The station was then used as an expedition center, a reception center for prisoners of war, an auction house, the residence of a theater company, even as a parking garage. It was also used as a setting for several films, including The Trial of Kafka adapted by Orson Welles.
Famous for its vast collection of Impressionist paintings, Musée d'Orsay holds the largest number of famous paintings in the world by Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Morisot, and Renoir.
Facing the Louvre and the Tuileries and overlooking the Quai de Seine, it is in the center of Paris, located in a strategic location.
.jpg)
