Books about Paris

 I need to start keeping track of books I’ve read because I requested a bunch from the library but I have a feeling I already read some of them for the 2022 Christmas trip with Juan, Mandy and Louise.  Especially the ones by John Baxter, an Australian who has been living in Paris since 1989.  I know I have read two of his books on Great Parisian Neighborhoods:  Montmartre - Paris’s Village of Art and Sin, and The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris, but have I read Five Nights in Paris: After Dark in the City of Light or A Year in Paris:  Season by Season in the City of Light?  After a while these books all merge together but in the end, I figure that I will end up with a sense of Paris.  I could, of course, start putting the books in Good Reads, but often I don’t finish a book…. 

I am also spending a lot of time browsing through Let’s Eat Paris and Paris in a Basket: Markets - the Food and the People, a book that Penny sent me ages ago.  Several years ago I purchased Let’s Eat France which is an even more monumental book.  Or maybe it’s just that they’ve made the print smaller in Let’s Eat Paris so that they could shrink the size of the book, like Culinaria did with their paperback versions.  You truly need a magnifying glass to read them!

Of course that’s not all I’m doing to prepare for our trip.  OnYouTube I’ve been concentrating on Les Frenchies (I got behind while I was preparing for the London trip) and a new one by a French man, Paris Top Tips.  I’ve been watching Les Frenchies for a long time and can always find them but I can’t seem to remember the name Paris Top Tips.  Soon enough I’ll get back to watching some YouTube in French, like C’est Meilleur quand c’est bon and La Cuisine des Monasteres.  If they speak too fast, I can always slow down the playback to 75%.  Captions generally aren’t a lot of help since they have as much trouble catching the words as I have.

Should I try Duolingo?  I got off on the wrong foot with them when I tried to create an account and discovered someone else was logging in using my email address.  You would think that Duolingo would verify that.  So I changed the password on them and then requested that Duolingo delete the account. I don’t think I’ve been back since… 

Back to Paris

 In April, we’re going to Paris with Camila and the boys (Peter and Silas) because SAS had cheap fares from Boston to Paris and because it coincides with the boys’ spring break (more or less) and because we have to test the French Immersion program at the Milton public schools.  We’re all very excited.  Fortunately we’ll be staying in an AirBnB because last time we did a trip together to San Francisco, we stayed at the Hotel Caza by Fisherman’s Wharf and it’s very hard to spend a lot of time together when you can only sit and vegetate together in the Hotel lobby (which was pretty good but not very private).

The first AirBnB in Paris that we reserved was north of Montmartre in the 18th Arrondissement.  The boys loved its quirkiness and it looked nice and clean but the first floor living room windows were previously a storefront so one wonders how private that would be.  There was a bedroom on the mezzanine which would have been great for the boys but the second bedroom was in the basement via a spiral staircase with a second living room with a sofabed.  The one toilet was also in the basement although there were showers on both the mezzanine and in the basement.  And Rue Hermel is a bit remote from the center (49 minutes walking and 37 minutes by metro to the Louvre) although there were two metro lines we could have taken to downtown.  We survived fine when we stayed at an AirBnB in the 17th with Juan, Mandy and Louise.  That one was 56 minutes walking to the Louvre, although only 24 minutes by metro.

After a lot of thought and more perusing, Camila came across an AirBnB in the 10th Arrondissement that has two bedrooms with two double beds plus a sofabed in the living room.  It only has one toilet but at least everything is on the same floor.  Although it is not as artsy as the Rue Hermel AirBnB, it is closer to downtown (28 minutes walking and 17 minutes by metro to the Louvre) and the neighborhood has more stores and restaurants.  It will be noisier because it is on the second floor on a busy street:  Rue du Faubourg San Martin.  As the name (Faubourg) indicates, it is outside the medieval city walls, beyond the arch of Porte San Martin which was built by Louis XIV in 1674, to replace the one build by Charles V in the 1300s (just fyi).

I, of course, am delighted by the fact that there is a covered market, le Marché couvert San Martin, just a 3 minute walk from the AirBnB (5 minutes for us).  Next door to that is a Franprix supermarket where I am assuming we can have a machine squeeze our own orange juice for us each morning, like we had in the Batignolles.  On Thursday or Sunday I’m hoping we can revisit the Marché Bastille so I can pick up yet another hat.  Penny and I went there on a Thursday in 2011 and were enchanted by all the produce we couldn’t buy and we both picked up cute little wool hats.  When we went for Christmas in 2022 with Juan, Mandy and Louise, I picked up a little cashmere hat, along with a couple of pillow covers.  Maybe if we go on Thursday (we arrive on a Wednesday) we can pick up some produce and cheese as well.  It’s a 32 minute walk from the AirBnB but only 16 minutes by metro.  Although I see that there is yet another market in between: Le Marché des Enfants Rouges, which we haven’t been to and that is open every day except Monday.  Hmmm.  Do you think we could hit both?  Does the AirBnB have a shopping cart?