L'Appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home

Paris was always Paris, and the French were…well, the French. But because of what happened—j’avais mûri, I had “ripened,” as they say. Living abroad, I learned and acclimated to different ways of doing things. Sometimes it’s learning not to touch the produce at the market. Other times, it’s going into a situation expecting the worst, instead of the

Ch. Lavillaugouet has been in the business of assainissement, water drainage, since 1872, and I’m not the first person they’ve saved in Paris.

You are clearly right, but in the end, you would probably lose because you are the propriétaire, and owners always lose.”

I had learned from having a few architects in the apartment that, unlike me, architects in Paris love going into basements and caves, where the “bones” of buildings are. Unlike American structures, buildings in Paris are hundreds or thousands of years old, and no one loves French history more than the French. Go underground, and you can actually se

Baking again, writing about France, and cooking la cuisine française in my new kitchen eventually helped me remember why I had moved to Paris, and why I wanted to stay. I love being able to run down the street to buy a freshly made baguette for breakfast from a boulangerie where the clerks now know me. And I love walking home, holding the bread by

By January, everyone in Paris had returned from their Christmas break, which even writers take. Unlike summer, the winter holidays are meant to be spent en famille.

The French, who often get a bum rap for being soft, are tougher than we give them credit for. I don’t know if I’ll ever make the full-on transition to being French, in spite of my folders bulging with nearly a decade and a half of electric bills (and now, three substantial binders of construction devis, factures, and bons de livraison). But I’ve le

1910, when the Seine flooded Paris and the water rose 28 feet above the normal level, submerging the city for a week. Parisians paddled boats through the métro stations and makeshift footbridges were set up over water-filled streets so pedestrians could cross.

It’s not always easy to live in Paris, and sometimes the city seems to do its best to make things more difficult. Like New Yorkers, Parisians have a complicated relationship to their city. They appreciate the beauty and excitement, but as Romain told me, Paris is dur (hard). That things aren’t easy—l’administration, the neighbors, the brusqueness,