Month: November 2025

Let gen AI and the Internet be your travel guide in this day and age

In the old days of travel (the 1980s), travellers would depend on printed guides from Fodor’s or Lonely Planet to be your travel guide. They were good, but very general.

Now with tools like ChatGPT and CoPilot, you can make your own highly specific guides just by asking them for it. For example, if you were travelling to Paris, you can ask it for walking tours of neighbourhoods like the Marais and prompt it to give you cafes to see or places to shop or museums to visit along your walk.  (Sure you can also Google that information, but by starting with gen AI, you can get it in a format you want.)

Likewise, you may think: what do I say to people once I get there? For that, I asked CoPilot:

Hello. You are a French to English translator. Please provide me with some common French phrases for that are useful for 1) when you arrive at the airport 2) when you come to your hotel 3) at a cafe 4) at a restaurant 5) at a museum 6) in a cab or uber

and it came back with such phrases as:

1. At the Airport

Bonjour, où est la sortie ? — Hello, where is the exit?
Où sont les taxis ? — Where are the taxis?
Où est la station de métro ? — Where is the subway station?
Je cherche la porte d’embarquement. — I’m looking for the boarding gate.
Où est la récupération des bagages ? — Where is baggage claim?
…
3. At a Café

Un café, s’il vous plaît. — A coffee, please.
Je voudrais un croissant. — I’d like a croissant.
Est-ce que je peux avoir l’addition ? — Can I have the bill?
C’est délicieux ! — It’s delicious!
Est-ce que vous avez du lait végétal ? — Do you have plant-based milk?

….

These were good, so I followed up with

Can you expand each list from 5 items to 10? Merci!

and it replied with this and more.

Parfait, Bernie ! Here’s an expanded list of 10 useful French phrases for each of the six travel situations, with their English translations:
…
4. At a Restaurant

Une table pour deux, s’il vous plaît. — A table for two, please.
La carte, s’il vous plaît. — The menu, please.
Je suis allergique à… — I’m allergic to…
Quel est le plat du jour ? — What is the dish of the day?
L’addition, s’il vous plaît. — The bill, please.
Je voudrais réserver une table. — I’d like to book a table.
Puis-je voir la carte des vins ? — May I see the wine list?
Est-ce que le service est compris ? — Is the tip included?
Je prends ce plat. — I’ll have this dish.
C’était excellent, merci ! — It was excellent, thank you!

Those are just two examples of how you can gen AI to help you with your travel plans. But really, the sky is the limit on what advice you can get from them.

N.B. Do I recommend you double check these guides outside of gen AI to make sure they are correct? Bien sûr! I found the answers we got back were good, but you’d be wise to use Google/Bing/Duck Duck Go  directly to confirm the advice you got.

My guide on how to use Michelin Guides to causally dine

You may think of Michelin guides in terms of deciding the best places to dine in a particular city or place. That is one way to think of them. If you aim to eat in the finest of establishments, their guides to 2 and 3 star restaurants can help you there.

On the other hand, if you want have a relaxing meal that doesn’t cost too much, you can still use their guides. Here’s two ways to do that:

  1. Go to restaurants with Bib Gourmand awards. As Michelin says, these are places with good quality, good value cooking. That’s how I ended up eating recently at Bao in London. It was delicious and super inexpensive. Same goes for Brutto, which I stopped at on my previous visit. If you were visiting Toronto, you would do well to eat at such places as Sunny’s Chinese or Bar Raval, all places with Bib Gourmands. Same goes for Russ and Daughters and Katz’s in New York, to name just a few more places.
  2. Go with restaurants with a price point rating of $ or $$. You likely won’t get fancy tablecloths or candlelight, but you will get really good food. Two examples of that in Toronto are PAI and CÀ PHÊ RANG, while in New York you get great meals at place like Via Carota and Momofuku Noodle Bar. Are you in London? Check out Barrafina or the Pig and Butcher.

Now, you can still causally dine in places that don’t meet the criteria above. I had a fantastic meal at Parcelles in Paris, but it is €€€, even though it feels casual there. Likewise I love St. JOHN in London, and it too feels like a casual place, but again, it is £££. But over all my guide holds, especially if you have no idea how to proceed and you don’t want to spend too much while still eating well.

Michelin is not the be all and end of all of where to dine in a city. Anyone who knows a city well can tell you that they pass over places that should be included, and underrate places you should check out. But you would do well to lean into their guides if you are aiming to eat well and eat causally in a city.

Three good lists to help you dine well in Paris (plus some other good sources)


It can be overwhelming trying to decide where to eat in Paris. You need a guide. Here’s some I recently used for a trip to Paris that I found were very helpful.

First up, I highly recommend David Lebovitz’s list of favorite Paris restaurants, not just for the list itself, but for the many tips to dining out in Paris at the end of the list. (He also has this older link, but it’s very old.)

We also took advantage Alison Roman’s list of places she hit up in Paris, although you may need to be a subscriber to see it. She is a big fan of the many great wine bars in Paris, as well as places like Les Enfants du Marché.

If you have to choose one source, then of course you want to go with Michelin, which obviously is a great guide for dining in Paris.  There are literally hundreds of restaurants you can choose from at all price points. There’s really no excuse to dine poorly with so many options.

To all those I would add Laura Calder, who is living in Paris now. Check out her substack to see where she has been in Paris. Years ago I asked her for advice on dining in that city and she pointed me to David Lebovitz. Now I do the same for you.

Before I forget, consider checking out the New York Times: do a search for “Paris”. I heard about Parcelles through this piece on Paris bistros and I knew I had to go.

As for the places we ate on our last trip, here’s my list of places we had good dinners:

The first three were three different sort of bistros, which I love. And the last two were bars with more casual fare.

For lunch we had lovely avocado toast sandwich with egg and watercress at Used Book Cafe in the Marais: highly recommend that spot. Another day we grabbed a jambon beurre from Caractère de Cochon and ate in while sitting in a park. Lovely.

Good desks, great home offices

If you want ideas on desks and home offices, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve written about them a lot over the many years I’ve had my blog. To see what I mean, click here. What can I say: other than your bed, your desk is the piece of furniture you use the most. You might as well have a good one. I felt that way during the pandemic, but it is no less true even as people RTO (return to the office).

If you need more inspiration on good desks and good workstations, check out this piece in the New York Times on their favourite home offices. You’ll find plenty of inspiring places to work with great desks at the center of them.

(Images via links to the New York Times piece.)

How to think about being happy and how to be happier

If you are like many people, you might wonder: am I happy? How can I be happy? Why am I not happy? What does it mean to be happy? It is a problematic term, happiness.

Perhaps we have problems with the idea of happiness because it varies from one person to the next. One person might be happy travelling the world, while another is happiest staying at home.  I could be happy being alone on a porch in a rainstorm: you could be happy at a big noisy party. It truly depends on the individual.

That said, if you are struggling with the uncertainty of knowing how to be happy, consider pursuing feelings associated with happiness. I find it is easier to be certain when it comes to feeling content, satisfied, pleased, delighted, joyful, amused, relaxed, calm or cheerful. Happiness is a rainbow of feelings, are all those positive feelings are a part of that rainbow.

Likewise, you may not know how you are feeling at the moment, but you may be able to firmly say you do not feel sad, angry, hungry, tired, or stressed. The absence of those unhappy feelings means you are closer to happiness than when you are experiencing them.

If your days are filled with hours of  contentment and calm and occasional moments of excitement and euphoria, it’s safe to say your days are also filled with happiness. If that does not describe your life, aim to do things and think thoughts that lead to more of those feelings. You’ll be glad you did. Dare I say, you’ll be happy.

 

 

New analog cameras in a digital world

It feels odd to write about analog cameras these days. They seem old fashioned and out of date to someone like me. Perhaps that’s why young people embrace them. If you too would like to embrace them (or at least know more about them), Yanko Design has two recent articles you might want to check out:

  1. a translucent analog camera (very 90s)
  2. a tiny retro camera from Kodak

Kodak even has a translucent one in their mix, because why not.

Do they take good photos? I guess “good” is in the eye of the beholder/photographer. Still, worth a look.

When Vienna was the center of the world, and Cafe Central was the center of Vienna

Every so often someone discovers the significance of Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century. It happened recently when Jason Kottke reposted this link of a map that showed many key figures of the century all living in one place at one time. Not only did they all live in the same city from 1913 to 1914, many of them went to the same place: Cafe Central. As wikipedia notes, at one time the regulars of the cafe included: “Peter Altenberg, Theodor Herzl, Alfred Adler, Egon Friedell, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Anton Kuh, Adolf Loos, Leo Perutz, Robert Musil, Stefan Zweig, Alfred Polgar, Adolf Hitler and Leon Trotsky. In January 1913 alone, Josip Broz Tito, Sigmund Freud, and Stalin were patrons of the establishment.” Not many places can claim such a world changing clientele.

Wikipedia also has my favorite anecdote about the cafe: “A well known story is that when Victor Adler objected to Count Berchtold, foreign minister of Austria-Hungary, that war would provoke revolution in Russia, even if not in the Habsburg monarchy, he replied: “And who will lead this revolution? Perhaps Mr. Bronstein (Leon Trotsky) sitting over there at the Cafe Central?”

While neither Vienna or the Cafe has maintained the same prominence since, both are still great places to visit now.  Go grab a kaffee mit schlag there when you can.

No one is safe from eviction, not even the rich and famous

Nothing is permanent in life. Ask Prince Andrew (now Andrew Mountbatten Windsor). Not only has he been stripped of his titles, but he has also been evicted from his residence, Royal Lodge. At least he has a place to go: who knows what will happen to his former wife, Sarah Ferguson, who also lived at the Lodge.

This reminds me of a recent story I read about other rich and famous people living at the grand Pierre Hotel in New York City. They too could soon be forced to move out due to the machinations of Howard Lutnick, no less.

There’s a cautionary tale for us all in these stories of the rich and famous: no matter how long or how settled you are in where you reside, you too could be forced to move under the right or wrong conditions. Not even wealth or fame can prevent it. Best to choose to live lightly. (Easier said than done, I know.)

P.S. For more on Andrew, see this. For a long and detailed story of the shenanigans happening at the Pierre, read this.