four days in paris

a travel diary

I think it is important to be a begrudging fan of Paris. Like, even if you enjoy the city, you shouldn’t be proud of it. Because yes, it’s a stupidly beautiful city, the kind of place that will make you scoff in disbelief every time you turn a corner and see, for the seventeenth time that day, a breathtaking mixture of light and architecture and charm, but it’s necessary—critical—to remember that Paris is also a very annoying city. The duality of Gaul, I suppose.

The last time I was in Paris was November 2024, so not very long ago; I’d gone with my best friend who’d never been there before, so we did a lot of the touristy things—which have their charm, mind you—while also enduring a sort of bone-chilling cold that frequently left us numb and irritated. A gorgeous combination, I’ll have you know.

This time, I was there with Marion Teniade, who was bravely hoping to impart some of her less conditional appreciation for the city to me. She was, I should say, moderately successful. More importantly, we had fun practicing our French, talking movies, and alternating between wine and not-wine. Ideally, she doesn’t hate me for my frequent utterances of “it’s only a 55-minute walk if we wanna do that?”

Before we get started, I really cannot emphasize enough how much the following is not a travel guide. I’m fascinated by other people’s travel diaries because I find it interesting to see what others choose to do and how they feel when visiting a place that’s not their home. Last year I did one for Porto and another for San Sebastián. It’s fun for me, but it’s not serious.

Walking

I assume this happens to other people because I have never once had an original thought and/or experience, but nearly every time I’m about to go on a trip, I regret booking it. Not because I don’t want to go, but because I’m like hold on, being home and having my little routine is so great? Why would I interrupt it with an airport and a flight and a four-day continuous search for clean [enough] public restrooms and good [enough] coffee and an endless cycle of figuring out if it’s better to return to the hotel for a quick nap before dinner or just consume enough caffeine to ensure a delirious sort of wakefulness?¹

Disregarding the fact that this is quite clearly a sign of impeccable mental health, thank you very much, the good thing is all this hesitation and regret more or less fades away as soon as I’m on my way to the airport. I can always trust inertia to play the role of savior/culprit in my life—a sort of consistency I appreciate.

If this light anxiety does not fade as soon as the trip starts, though, once I reach my destination I can count on a long walk to succeed where the mere passage of time failed. When I go somewhere new and do something as familiar to me as walking, it almost makes me feel at home. Like yes, okay, the ominous threat of shin splints is recognizable wherever I am in the world. That’s comforting.

This is why some people get angry at me. God forbid a girl exorcise her demons, I guess!

I’m predisposed to harbor all sorts of goodwill for any city that allows itself to be safely walked for hours on end, despite its [French] flaws, because then what I end up remembering from the trip are the snippets of conversation I overheard on this or that street, the bars I popped into for a brief break, the photos I tried to take that fell hilariously short of reality, the albums pouring out of my headphones, and the people walking beside me.

A walk is an inherently sentimental thing! You are literally going places! Physically carrying yourself from one state to another! There’s magic in that! The body keeps the score in good ways, too!

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, I walked a lot in Paris. No shin splints because this time around, unlike in November ‘24, I wasn’t walking up and down Montmartre every day (why did I do this exactly? nobody can tell me), but I still happily collapsed at the end of every night, which is really all I ever want from a city vacation.

Culture, etc.

At the end of the day, I’m someone who enjoys a little museum visit. I’m sorry, but the words “there’s a new exhibit at [x]” sends a thrill down my spine. You’d think that after a handful of visits to Paris, I’d perhaps be tapped out of its museum lobby, but you’d be mistaken. No Louvre this time, no, but we did go to the Orsay, which I find more pleasant than the former due to its more manageable surface area and visitor count—that, and the fact that I remain an impressionism girl. Sue me. I like Audrey Hepburn, too.

(Tangent! Over the last couple of months I’ve been watching these lectures the National Gallery in London publishes on specific artists and/or paintings. They’re all free to watch on the museum’s YouTube channel, and I’ll be frank, the lectures from before Covid are better than the more recent ones, but there’s a generous backlog that’s very much worth perusing. Some of my favorites: Vincent Van Gogh and Gauguin; Titian’s myth of Ariadne and Bacchus; JMW Turner’s “The Evening Star”; and Caravaggio’s life and style in three paintings. There’s a lot there if you’re interested in learning more about art history!)

There was indeed a Renoir exhibit at the Orsay, and scrap what I said about the manageable visitor count, because every tourist in Paris was located in this exact set of rooms, gently elbowing each other to take mostly mediocre photos of the artist’s romantic and bright little scenes. Naturally, I engaged in my own exercise in mediocrity. I hate to be excluded.

How to explain to you that somehow, someway, this was the best photo I took of the entire Renoir exhibit? An inspiring lack of patience—I was galloping outta there.

I will say I enjoyed the Van Gogh rooms more. Was it because I had a solid one foot radius around which to safely move without running into a fellow museum visitor? We’ll literally never know.

Something I kept thinking about—remember, I’m an empath—as I walked by the art from Vincent’s Arles era is how the paint supply store guys must have hated to see him coming. Like oh here comes the Dutch man in search of yellow again, we’re gonna have to tell him we ran out and it’ll be a whole thing! (In my defense, I’d been awake for a long time by the time we went to the Orsay that evening.)

No one has ever framed a photo better btw. No, it’s not tilted.

We also went to the National Archives, where I’d never been before, and they happened to be displaying an exhibit on Lafayette, so Marion and I engaged in a teensy bit of patriotism and reminisced about Hamilton. It took about seven hours for “Guns and Ships” to exit my brain, even though I will forever maintain that “Wait for It” is the musical’s best song. Anyway. This has been your quarterly reminder that I am indeed a Broadway baby.

Outside the National Archives. Unfortunately I am a sucker for whenever the clouds Do That.

Including this photo mostly because I think I look vaguely disgusted in a Chiara Ferragni sort of way and that is funny to me. I was not, to be clear, disgusted. This was a beautiful store and I was wearing a jaunty silk scarf around my neck—how to be anything but pleased?

We also saw The Drama (no spoilers, literally do not fret)

I love doing a few mundane things while traveling. Things I’d be doing if I actually lived there. I think it’s because at the end of the trip, when I inevitably ask myself the question could I live here, I want to have an answer founded on more than liking the museum and a long walk across Île de la Cité, lovely as both of these are. So yes, let me visit the grocery store and peruse the aisles for a quick fifteen minutes. Let me carve a routine out of going to the same cafe three mornings in a row.

If you find yourself in the 9th ish, Jaja is a great little cafe for a morning read.

And yes, let me go to the cinema. Because no, I wouldn’t say visiting Les Halles movie theater is at the top of any travel blog’s top ten things to do in the French capital, but escaping the afternoon rain for a couple hours to experience a crowded screening of The Drama teeming with Parisians audibly (and rightly, if I may) rooting for Zendaya? To the tune of leave the gun, take the cannoli: skip the Louvre, go to the movies.

The “spoiler” situation, if we wanna call it that, is a real minefield when it comes to The Drama, so I won’t say anything yet² except that I need whoever convinced Harry Styles to stop acting to get on the horn and dial Alana Haim. Respectfully, I can’t do this anymore. S’il te plaît.

Eating and drinking

To be soooo completely honest, I know people are like ooh la la qu’est-ce qu’on va manger ici, quel excitement, etc., but I’m personally not someone who goes to Paris to eat well. I don’t particularly adore French food and I follow a plant-based diet, so I’m mostly oh-for-two when it comes to meals in that city.

That being said: I had multiple rounds of French fries, ate some of the best (1) porridge and (2) Lebanese food of my life, and drank a variety of alcoholic beverages at deeply cute locales. Photographic evidence, along with restaurant/bar names, below.

Do you even see this? I entered a new dimension. La Cantine de Sam! They have three locations, I think, but we went to the one in the 9th, on 50, Rue Rochefoucauld.

Had potentially the best porridge of the last five years at Marcelle in Montmartre.

Hold on, for the rest I just put together the most deranged collage I’ve ever been responsible for. The falafel plate is from Aux Dés Calés 18 on 11, Rue Moreau and the place with “La Cave” neon sign is from Divvino in Le Marais. The fries are fries, you can get fries anywhere. The bread at the top is an onion fougasse that I ate in a fugue state half an hour before heading to the airport.

Unwell. This is the kind of material they study at Quantico when learning the subtle art of profiling, I think.

And you know what, let’s celebrate Breizh, whose staff was kind enough to make me a vegan crepe. It was very wholesome—maybe overly so. But as evidenced by my look of love in my Elizabeth Holmes turtleneck, the gesture was deeply appreciated. We’d had a couple of drinks at Cambridge Public House before this and that helped me to be like sure what the hell I’ll have some peas.

Lastly: Stéréo, a gorgeous listening/wine bar between Pigalle and Saint-Georges where Marion and I went on our last night and after which we walked by Dianna Agron, inspiringly and chronically unemployed former Gleek.

Things I was glad to get back to when I returned home

• My beloved bowls of cereal slop. (I’ve written about this before because it really is that serious for me, but these bowls involve: bran cereal; a chocolatey sort of granola that the store calls muesli as if they want to gaslight me into believing I’m being healthier than I actually am but they know and I know that it’s not muesli it’s granola; half a banana; a handful of strawberries or whatever berry I have available; yogurt; a generous dollop of peanut butter; and milk. Best part of my day, I fear.)

• Coffee at home, especially the two cups I drink during my morning journaling.

• The very specific noises of my apartment.

• The 3-5 meandering routes I choose between on any given day.

• Gossiping irl with my friends. In-person gossip just hits different.

And that’s it, folks. Congratulations to all of us for making it this far. x

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1. It will not surprise you that I will always—always—opt for the latter.

2. I’ll do a capsule review post soon, though, because I’ve been a real frequent flyer at the cinema lately.