A tarte citron a day keeps the doctor away: PARIS

Well, then, Paris.

My first solo international travel was here some nine or ten years back, for which I remember preparing by fastidiously studying French and various social/cultural codes, some of which leapt back into my brain this trip as soon as I walked off the train from London. This trip was a happy consequence of dirt-cheap airfare that knocked out my previous spring break plans (Los Angeles to see friends I'd hoped to see on a trip last year before getting derailed). And the city was just about as glorious and atmospheric and friendly as I remember. After the jump: videos, photos, pockets of memory!

The view outside my apartment window. OKAY FINE COOL LET'S GET CHEESE AND WINE AND BE FRENCH

Another "missing some footage" video, scored to the song that was in my head all week long. Guys! Now that I'm leaving Boston I have found a favorite band there, a favorite restaurant, and a favorite tailor. Ah, the enduring changeability of life!

This time around I stayed on the Île Saint-Louis, the residential/shops-and-cafes-littered island adjacent to the Île de la Cité, home of Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle. It just happened to be the most central and affordable of apartments on AirBnB, and given that I was ultimately still writing a chapter while on the trip, that worked out nicely - being central enough that any sightseeing could easily dovetail with my work while still keeping it a week with lots of walking, culminating with the walk up the stairs to my place, a cozy sixth-floor retreat. This turned out to be very important given that pastry figured heavily (HEAVILY) into the week. Whoops.

Paris, bein' old and new all at once.

Basically when you have this view on your morning stroll, you are having a PRETTY OKAY TIME is my feeling.

The theme of this trip was: BLUUUUUE

Sunset on a walk home. Aroo aroo [pictures of kittens falling all over themselves adorably]

That said, I almost immediately found the neighborhood I would want to stay in next time. Saint-Louis is tourist central, though funnily enough it seemed to follow a schedule, particularly on the weekends, by which midmorning to midafternoon Notre Dame and its surroundings were thronged, and late afternoon my home island would be swarming with tourists lining up for ice cream. But once I found my way to the Marché d'Aligre, I was hooked on exactly the energy I like when I travel.

Bastille, my old stomping grounds! Last trip I stayed very near here, and I still love this neighborhood a lot. Disappointingly, a couple of streets near here have grown precipitously in the direction of the Magnificent Mile or a British high street, all global chains and flourescent lights, but once you get off those main drags it's still a charmer.

A little east of Bastille, Aligre isn't untoursity (so so few corners of the city are tourist-free), but has palpable daily rhythms of local trade. A daily morning market where a majority of the customers know the vendors, and bakeries that fill up at 5 PM as workers stop off on the way home for that night's bread (and perhaps a dessert pastry of some sort). It's right near Paris's version of New York's Highline (though if I recall correctly Paris may have gotten there first), which is full of joggers and amblers, and on the day I walked its length, one of the happier spots in the city.

Good lord this walk was gorgeous. My instagram feed that day was an exercise in restraint given the plethora of photos I decided to take.

Speaking of happiness, I found it much the same as when I visited in November almost a decade ago: quite friendly and open! I have friends who've found the opposite, who have gotten frustrated at rudeness/coldness, whatever you want to call it. And I'm pretty sure they all do the same thing I do in terms of learning French and basic etiquette (greeting shop owners on your way in, etc.) so I really think a lot of it comes down to season. I've visited in November and March, and I think others have mostly visited in the summer; and truly, the one window in which Parisians seemed a bit brusque or grumpy was the weekend, when the city's tourist trade visibly swelled up. (The banks of the Seine, often atmospheric and lazy, were wall-to-wall people on Saturday and Sunday.) So, it may just be a question of timing, but whatever the reason - I feel lucky to have had friendly, funny, kind Parisians in almost all of my encounters there.

THIS KITTY WAS PARTICULARLY FRIENDLY.

So, What I Did: between a dumb lost-time window in which I tried to recover lost footage from the end of London and the start of Paris, and dedicated writing time, I wasn't constantly on the prowl. But this felt good: a nice trial run for my summer, which will look similar albeit through monthlong stays in other European cities. So most days were spent about half at the writing project, and half on foot exploring. Some highlights:

Maaaaaybe this ceiling is better than yours. Maybe. I mean it's "nice" at least is a thing you can say about it.

The Louvre. I'd avoided it last time, having heard that it was gargantuan, a madhouse, etc., but thought this time I'd dip in and explore one wing with the help of an audio guide. It was cool! It reminded me of the Musée d'Orsay, though: such a wealth of masterpieces that it becomes difficult to retain your sense of wonder and focus. In a sense, the most stunning thing about the Louvre was remembering its historical use as a palace and place of official governmental business, whereupon its scale and excess suddenly felt pointed and clear. Not something I regret at all, but the Pompidou Centre remains my favorite of the city's (and very nearly the world's) museums.

MAYBE THIS BUILDING IS IMPRESSIVE AS MUCH AS I KIND OF THINK WE SHOULD KILL THE RICH AND MAKE SOUP FROM THEIR BONES.

Maybe actually useful pro tip: if you go to the Louvre at 6 PM on a Wednesday (the day they stay open til I think almost 10 PM) there's almost no line, and crowds inside the museum are pretty... normal-museum-styles? Which means you can hang out with Venus de Milo all by yerself, so neato for that.

Churches! Specifically Notre Dame, much as I remember it from my last trip, down to the quite-depressing box reading "For the poor" in the back of the nave, but an awe-inspiring space with brilliant acoustics. (If you go at a time that mass is being sung, you're really getting it right.) Sainte-Chapelle was a new visit this go round, and while I'm not a huge fan of paying to enter churches it's clear why they charge for it. Given its size, the surround-sound stained-glass brilliance is breathtaking. Again, not entirely my speed, but if you have a taste for this, it's superb. But the real treasure of the city was Sacre Coeur, up on Monmartre. While the surrounding neighborhoods are palpably touristed-up, the church itself is still gorgeous, especially on a late-afternoon blue-skied day. Magic!

The lost video footage of this place makes it clearer how magical light coming through these windows is but, in art-history terms, it was: super keen.

Basilicas are always going to seem cool to me and if they have horses on top then they are going to seem extra cool to me and also look how nice the sky look how nice.

I'd hoped to see some performance while in town, but just missed the cutoff for tickets to Carmen at the opera, and the Comédie Française's production that I wanted to see (Victor Hugo! My fave moral firebrand French playwright!) didn't time out with my trip. I did catch a free lunch concert at the Petit Palais - a lovely and airy museum with an auditorium where a baritone sang, essentially, a recital. But mostly I walked: through neighborhoods, through parks (Parc des Buttes Charmant still maybe my favorite). A visit to the Garnier Opera House (the setting for The Phantom of the Opera) was my nod to the city's rich performing history, and for Hugo I had to content myself with a visit to the Pantheon - essentially a civic monument building with a mausoleum to the country's great heroes in its lower level, including Hugo's grave.

One of the wings of the Garnier, where you could literally hear visitors gasp as they entered. FANCY TIMES USA (France)

The Pantheon! This is Foucault's Pendulum, which demonstrated the rotation of the earth, and which gave Umberto Eco's novel its name (and the setting for its creepy friggin' ending). The building's history is fascinating too! Who cares!

I eschewed eating out this time.... Paris has fantastic restaurants, though a bit more expensive than other continental cities, but also incredible makers of cheese, charcuterie, great produce, etc. - so it was easy to basically make my own grocery-based meals and still feel like it was pretty special and not just a thrift move. The one exception was my first night there, where my friend Thrisa and I met up - she'd been on a longer trip and I'd realized we would overlap the night before I got there. As with every one of these confluences, it was a real treat to see a familiar and friendly face in new circumstances, to share tips and experiences, and then be on our mutual way. I'm in the midst of lining up a few similar meetings for this summer, and I already know they're gonna be highlights.

Thrisa (artist's rendering, if she were a centaur with a... b..bird on her head? OK I forgot to take a picture of Thrisa WHATEVER.

That, and endless meandering, was Paris for me. You get a pretty clear sense, being there, why the French coined a term for Flânerie, the kind of strolling and soaking-in that the city is practically made for. It's one of those cities that I could spend months in and still have things that I'd like to see or do, and I could spend years getting acclimated to the culture, but it was nice to be there and have it feel familiar, welcoming, and a little bit magical.

Flower market on Île de la Cite

Loved this sculpture, passed every time I made my way to Bastille.

St. Germain, early morning charm edition.

Riverside evening strolls. These were magic and lovely.

I may have some stray-thoughts posts in the coming weeks; but for now, travel has taken a turn to the pragmatic! I'm writing this from Chicago, where I celebrated a birthday surrounded by amazing friends and family, feeling really loved and marveling at what a difference a year makes. In a few weeks, I'll be driving my things out here to pile into a storage unit, flying back to Boston to close that chapter and finish the semester, and then I'll be off for a summer of writing abroad, one final indulgence in the geographic freedom that this academic chapter has allowed me before I hit the ground of full-time jobbery (and hopefully a little adjunct teaching while I finish revising and defend my dissertation). Many more reflections on that, and the complicated but ultimately rewarding relationship I've had with Boston, in a future post.

Work in progress and things to come!