The travel experts predict that this will be a staycation summer, with gas prices over $4 and the economy melting like an Eskimo pie. It's always been a luxury to be able to hop a plane to Paris, to Venice, to the Grand Canyon. But as I read the welcome letter sent to my daughter from her camp director, I decided that she is luckier still. The real luxury travel of the modern age is not through space; it's through ...

Married. Rosa Prado, 20, chic, Paris-born amateur flyer and horsewoman, only daughter of Peru's President Manuel Prado y Urgarteche; and Hugo Peter Parks, 24, tall, freckled, British-educated son of Peru's socialite Clubwoman Mercedes Gallagher Parks and U.S. Citizen Henry W. Parks; in Lima, Peru. Married. Signal Corps Sergeant Robert Hopkins, 23, thin-faced photographer son of Presidential Adviser Harry Hopkins ; and Brenda Stephenson, 18, daughter of a Lancashire engineer; in Perryvale, Middlesex, England. Married. Freeman Gosden, 45, philosophic, long-suffering "Amos" ...

The scene was Allied press headquarters in Paris on a rainy summer day. Facing the half-dozing correspondents, Lieut. Colonel John A. Keck, onetime Pittsburgh engineer and now chief of Allied technical intelligence on German weapons, began quietly: "This will make Buck Rogers seem as if he lived in the Gay '90s." He proceeded to unfold the improbable story of what German scientists were up to when V-E day interrupted them. At a research center in Hillersleben a group of them ...

You're competing at Wimbledon, so you haven't gone home to China since you won the French Open. What do you expect the reception to be? I knew if I went back to China, many people would come to me and be crazy. So I [stayed] in Munich for four days and turned off my phone. After Melbourne I went back to China, and I couldn't concentrate on the tennis court. I didn't want to make the same mistake. One ...

Re "Why they leave France" [April 16]: There is a typically French disease that prompts citizens to overcriticize the country. Those judgments are, most of the time, merciless and exaggerated. I've traveled a lot, and I can tell you that people in the rest of the world are able to be supportive of their own country without being stupidly patriotic. You can certainly find thousands of faults with France, but there are still a million reasons to stay here, one ...

Steven Spurrier was in Mumbai but thinking of Paris. He is the British wine expert best known for organizing the so-called "Judgment of Paris" — a 1976 blind tasting between French and U.S. wines in which the Americans improbably came out on top. The contest was a sensation, and sparked the explosion of the American wine market. Now, 33 years later, Spurrier is hoping to witness another revolution, this time in India. He went to Mumbai ...

Society At A Glance 2009 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development 132 pages The Gist: If you're looking for another reason to hate on France, you might check out the latest report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. According to the Paris-based group, the French spend twice as much time enjoying meals each day than most Americans, and get nearly an hour's more sleep each night than most Japanese . The study, which is based on government ...

Died. Eugene Jolas, 55, New Jersey-born author, poet, and cofounder of the avant-garde Paris literary review transition; of acute nephritis; in Paris. The first to print James Joyce's Work in Progress , transition was also among the first in English with the work of Franz Kafka and Andre Gide . To such U.S. literary expatriates of the '205 as Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, Erskine Caldwell, Kay Boyle, Katherine Anne Porter, Hamilton Basso and William Carlos Williams—all glad ...

If you retraced the footsteps of Angelina Jolie and Marilyn Monroe, George Clooney and Charlie Chaplin, their paths would cross at Paris' Htel le Bristol, lebristolparis.com. Situated just two blocks from the Elyse Palace on the chic Rue du Faubourg St.-Honor, it has for generations attracted celebrities, diplomats and the world's most well-heeled travelers. They visit to indulge in amenities that include the city's largest bathrooms and a sixth-floor pool with sweeping views of the Paris ...

For many people, voodoo calls to mind raving witch doctors and dolls bristling with needles. But given our fascination, and voodoo's lurid position in popular culture, it is surprising that the extraordinary sculpture of voodoo's African birthplace has never been seen in a major exhibition. The omission is more remarkable given the booming interest in African and Oceanic art. The anomaly has been rectified by the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris, which is holding Vodun: African Voodoo until ...