Weekend Conversation Starters

[Messy Nessy Chic]   April in Paris… This weekend we enter Ella Fitzgerald’s favourite month in the city.  Paris is starting to see its annual arrival of Spring visitors again, and your [MessyNessy Concierge]( has been busy crafting bespoke itineraries and trip ideas, so [get in touch](! In the meantime, let’s get in the mood for warmer weather with [the lost floating pools of Paris](. Let’s feast on rotisserie chickens and drink champagne in the [forgotten treehouse bars of the Belle Epoque](… And go Parisian island hopping in search of a [lost 1930s nudist utopia](. Enjoy April in Paris with a little throwback [postcard of Paris in bloom]( from me to you and [my soundtrack]( that includes Ella, of course. Your weekend conversation starters await. Stay curious, [Nessy]   [Sex, Lies, and LSD: The CIA’s Untold Story of Operation Midnight Climax](  [tumblr_cffe7f30697e6ba9dc88c3c08b869759_3878d30b_640]( Did you ever hear the one about the CIA-employed sex workers who were trained to drug, bed and interrogate unsuspecting American citizens while they were unwittingly tripping on LSD as government agents secretly watched? You’d think you’d remember a story like that but Operation Midnight Climax has conveniently evaded the public consciousness for decades. We’re talking about tax payer-funded safe houses in the 1950s and 60s…  [Continue Reading](   [Decoding the Secrets of Italy’s Storytelling Gardens](  [tumblr_cffe7f30697e6ba9dc88c3c08b869759_3878d30b_640]( We live in landscape narratives — places where stories are embedded in the land itself, entangled in the vegetation or built into the architecture. A winding road, a tower, a house under construction or falling apart — in all these we find stories at work. Gardens are perhaps the ultimate landscape narrative where stories may…  [Continue Reading](   [Wet Hot Parisian Summer: A Lost 1930s Nudist Utopia](  [tumblr_cffe7f30697e6ba9dc88c3c08b869759_3878d30b_640]( In Physiopolis, life was better in the buff. Or at least in a bikini, which was as close as one could legally get to public nudity in 1930s Paris. It was here, on an isolated sun-baked island on the Seine, that a titillating new naturiste-nudiste (naturalist and nude) movement sprang forth…  [Continue Reading](   [The Gibson Family Album of Shipwrecks](  [the-mildred-1912-courtesy-of-sothebys]( The Gibsons are my kind of family. Papa John Gibson, a local seaman from Penzance, took his first photograph of a shipwreck in 1869 and from then on, he and his family were determined to be first on the scene. His two sons, Alexander and Herbert perfected the art of photographing the dramatic wrecks. Each glass…  [Continue Reading](   [13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. DCXLII)](  [00-destacada2]( [Continue Reading](  Interested in Becoming a MessyNessy Keyholder? [Apply now to unlock the Vault!](    [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( [LinkedIn]( [Blog]( [To read more from MessyNessyChic visit the Blog]( and make sure you keep getting these email by adding contact@messynessychic.com to your address book or whitelist us. Our postal address: In a Café, Paris 75001 Want out of the loop? [Unsubscribe](.