Hunting for the Lost River of Paris

La Seine, immortalized by artists and adored by lovers dangling their feet over the quay, harbours a dark secret. Under the fifth and thirteenth arrondissements grumbles la Bièvre, the Seine’s younger sibling who was banished to the netherworld over one-hundred years ago. Starting thirty-three kilometers away in the Yvelines and feeding into the Seine at…

The River Café Waiting at the End of a Hidden Valley

The internet can be sometimes be terribly misleading. I stumbled upon the above photograph on Pinterest, but the photograph’s location had been erroneously captioned and gone viral with its misinformation. As far back as I could go on the internet search pages, the paradisiac spot purported to be among “10 Unique things to do in Santorini”. Never one to…

Forget Venice, Float over to its Technicolor Island Neighbour

It’s easy to forget that Venice isn’t the only magical, slightly weird water world around. The Venetian lagoon is home to more than 30 other inhabited islands, one of which is Burano. The stuff of dreams, prettier than a Greek island, ‘charming’ wouldn’t even begin to cover it. An hour’s boat ride on the public water…

What was Found (and Still Edible) Inside a 150-year-old Sunken Steamboat

In 1856, the Steamboat Arabia was frontier bound, loaded with supplies for 16 towns. With two hundred tons of precious cargo aboard, it left Kansas up the Missouri river on a routine trip, but waiting silently at the water’s surface, lost in the glare of the setting sun, was the thick trunk of a huge, fallen walnut…

Florida’s Tarzan Still Haunts His Old Camp

At 6’4” and 240 pounds, handsome, muscular Russian-American Vincent Natulkiewicz looked like he’d stepped out of a Tarzan movie. And like Tarzan, he lived in the jungle with his animals. Vince “Trapper” Nelson—or Tarzan of the Loxahatchee River—arrived in Hobe Sound, Florida, from New Jersey in 1930. He built a log cabin deep in the…

Flying Water Taxis are coming to Paris this Summer

Lo and behold, flying machines straight out of a Jetsons cartoon are set to become a reality. Think Uber but as a boat which hovers above the water– so basically, a flying boat taxi, right here along the Paris Seine River.. Alain Thébault and Anders Bringdal, who together broke the record for speed on a flying sailboat that…

River Rockets of the Soviet Space Age

It looks like a prop from Star Wars doesn’t it? Trust the Soviets to have the coolest abandoned stuff lying around. During the cold war period and into the 1980s, this rusting behemoth was once part of a fleet of vessels which rose out of the water at high speed and were considered the heroes of the Russian riverways.…

The Floating Paris Winery

Between the 19th and 20th century, wine barrels would travel via canal boat from the regions of Burgundy all the way to Paris which were then traded at the riverside cellars of Bercy, destined to grace the tables of thirsty Parisians. Today, there is one little houseboat, known as ‘La Cave Vagabonde‘, still making the…