Roaming Around Paris

I recently returned from a week in France. A week swimming in words, swimming in beauty, swimming in the power and magic a sense of place can provide.

I’ve been here before, a handful of times. Paris was my introduction to Europe, where I got lost in St. Germain’s winding tourist trap streets and drank cheap wine on the steps of Sacre Coeur while the sun set. Back then, pre-iPhone, I bought cheap paperbacks along the Seine and carried Lonely Planet guides like talismans. I went to the Louvre once, and after hip-checking hundreds of other tourists to get a view of the Mona Lisa, I retreated, abashed, to a museum café. There, I ate a croque madame while reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals. Context beat content that time.

Later, it was the backdrop of early, heady, romantic days with my now-husband Emmett. We watched outdoor movies, dunked baguettes into Nutella jars, took Tuileries selfies before selfies were a thing. I lay in bed in the late afternoon, in love and unable to concentrate, reading the same pages over and over.

A few years ago, I came back alone, wandering the Canal Saint Martin in winter, devouring books in cozy cafes. I’ve never been anything but dazzled by this place.

This time, I was here for work - four days of meetings in a Chateau near Chantilly - but there was so much opportunity for discovery before, during, and after. In Chantilly, I went for morning runs past horse stables and overgrown glass greenhouses. I ate dark, ripe, unwaxed fruit straight from a Caravaggio painting. I watched my co-workers belt out karaoke – Oasis tunes reverberating against the walls of an old dungeon. And, in stolen moments between it all, I read. Or, more accurately, re-read – laughing along with my favorite stories from Part Deux of David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day.

In Paris, my friend and I did the greatest hits our way – hiking Montmartre, wandering the Marais, poring over polaroids at weekend markets - and found new things too. Street art in Belleville. French skincare regimens that smell like decay. Curry at Mr. T, a restaurant then just four days into its operations. And, of course, a bookstore in every arrondissement. I discovered the ultimate local’s spot, Libralire on Rue Saint Maur. And, like every English-speaking visitor, I made the pilgrimage to Shakespeare and Company. But my real mecca is Merci’s Used Book Café. Is it gross to scatter someone’s ashes among a gorgeous cache of used books? Because that’s what I want for myself someday.

This time, for the first time, I made a conscious effort to read books set in and around Paris. I read Julia Child’s My Life in France while sitting in cafes, eating Moules Frites and drinking Sancerre, and her absolute enthusiasm for the city gave me that uncomfortable thrill of too-bright sun or fleeting love. I took The Idiot, Elif Batuman’s big Cambridge-to-Paris-to-Budapest book, on my own similar route from America to France to Hungary. I began – and am still trying to get through – my namesake book by the Marquis de Sade.

My French came back (sort of). My imagination came back. I ate, drank, wandered, and read my way to total contentment. It was a revelation. It always is. And, in many ways, it’s why I’m starting this blog.