Find Paris | The Press

Because of a Japanese anime series, lady oscar, which takes place at the dawn of the French Revolution, I developed an intense obsession with Paris at the age of 13. A desire that was aggravated by reading everything that came to hand concerning this period, from the biography of Marie-Antoinette by André Castelot to the speeches of Danton and the writings of the Marquis de Sade.

I saw Paris in my soup. I dreamed about it at night. I only read French writers.

It wasn’t until I was 22 that I was able to set foot there. And again, it took several trips for Paris to become “my” Paris.

The first time I went there was with my Belgian girlfriend whose family lived in Paris. Her name is also Chantal, and since we were roommates with our buddies, they called us the Chantaux. Chantal wasn’t going to go sightseeing, she already knew the city, she wanted to see her parents and her sister, while on my side, it was my first flight.

I was too fearful then to launch myself alone into the incredible maze of this city where I have the impression that even the regulars always manage to get lost.

You can only discover Paris by getting lost in it. After two years of pandemic without traveling, it is the city that I miss the most, with Jacmel, in Haiti.

But this Belgian family that I adore, among other things for their puns that make me roll my eyes, introduced me to French cheeses for a week in Provence. The planning of each day was based on meals planned with care and greed. Much later, I read in the Glossary of Emil Cioran, this eternal Romanian complex in the Parisian milieu: “What did I actually learn in France? Above all what it means to eat and write. In the hotel where I was staying in the Latin Quarter, at 9 a.m. every morning the manager worked out the lunch menu with his wife and son. I couldn’t believe it. My mother had never consulted us on such a subject, while in this family there was a daily three-party conference. I thought at first that they were expecting guests. Error. The order of meals, the succession of dishes were the subject of an exchange of views as if it had been the main event of the day, which moreover was the case. […] So I only learned at the age of 27 what eating means, what this daily degradation has that is remarkable, unique. And that’s how I stopped being an animal. »

I learned that when I was 22. Every night, my Belgian family opened the box of cheeses like it was a treasure, and the first time the smell hit me, I thought the cat had just pissed on my pants. They were all ecstatic over the shape, the taste, while I was nauseous. But I tasted it out of politeness and today, I no longer control myself when I’m in front of a well-flowing Époisses.

If there’s one thing I like to visit in Paris, it’s cheese shops and wine shops. For the price of a bottle or a goat’s droppings, you are given a gastronomy lesson.

In fact, my first fantasy wasn’t even Paris, but the Palace of Versailles, which eclipsed everything else when I was 13.

You will guess here that I am a fan of the show Secrets of history moderated by Stéphane Bern. And just as much of the parody of Olivier Morin who describes Place Versailles in Montreal with the same enthusiasm as the host.

The first time I visited Versailles, I was with my boyfriend, who has never seen me in a state of pure joy like this. I was tireless, I spoke like a guide, I wanted to see everything, he endured me with the giggles. In the height of summer, the walls oozed the aroma of centuries of human presence in a castle where the nobles did not wash. “Do you realize that we may be smelling the last aromas of the du Barry?” I told her, excited.

After this experience of extreme tourism in full jet lag, the emotion was too strong, I fainted like a groupie.

My curiosity, however, brought me back to the people of the French Revolution. I visited the jails of the Conciergerie in the Palais de la Cité, all the places where the guillotine was enthroned which beheaded the stars of the time, from Louis XVI to Robespierre, and how many anonymous people were denounced by their neighbors. I like the Place de la République and the Place de la Bastille, where all the popular movements meet.

In short, I saw little Paris the first time. Over time, I’ve had a few stays, some disappointing, like this week when, I don’t really know how, my boyfriend and I had systematically come across the worst restaurants that made us doubt the French culinary reputation, probably tourist traps, in addition to being reminded of our accent until customs where an agent searched our luggage telling us about the great dreamy Canadian spaces. It was as if I couldn’t enter my Parisian fantasy, despite my best efforts.

I made this city my own just by living there for four months when I was a correspondent for The Press. By discovering the Paris of today, rather than that of my books.

I couldn’t recommend enough to travelers to land in Paris, rather than rushing there with an endless list of places to visit.

Either way, there are too many. The city itself is a museum, Paris having been preserved from the bombs of the Second World War, unlike London. When you walk in Paris, you walk through centuries of history, and at each step there is a café where you can rest if your feet hurt. You can spend hours sucking on a glass of red while watching people live without anyone coming to mop between your legs to tell you to get out if you don’t have another drink. And no matter where you fall, there’s a metro station that will take you where you want to go. I don’t understand those who have a car in Paris, the metro is so marvelous that no longer holds any secrets for me.

I have thus surveyed the City of Light, day and night, left bank and right bank, discovering at each detour something new that is no longer new for its natives. I spent four months living on the terraces, noon and night, alternating between coffee and the balloon of red at a decent price. It’s the only place in the world where I feel like you can read and write in a cafe without looking posed, plus it’s easy to strike up conversations with your table neighbors — the French have something gregarious, even more so if you give them a cigarette (Paris is the last paradise for smokers). I felt so comfortable and at home that tourists spontaneously came to ask me questions every day as if I was from the place.

In truth, I found Paris when I stopped dreaming about it, or else it was Paris that found me.