I was browsing The Atlantic website the other day and came across this article by Rachel Donadio celebrating the month of August as a wonderful time to be in Paris. “Of all the cities I’ve lived in,” she writes, “August is best in Paris.” Donadio celebrates the quiet streets, the lost tourists, and the niche radio and television stories about feminism, Blaise Pascal, or the decline of French Socialist Party. Melancholy, Donadio reflects on the month that has just ended: “Traffic thins; shops close, sometimes for the entire month; restaurants shut; there are seats to be found on the metro; and in the evening, stragglers (not everyone can afford to go away) emerge from their stuffy, un-air-conditioned apartments and gather along the banks of the Seine.”

She is, in my opinion, completely wrong to celebrate August in Paris. Having just come through my first summer in the city as a Greek hero might make it through the land of the dead, I can assuredly declare that August is in fact the worst time of year to be in Paris.

Donadio makes light of shops closing, including her bakery, but in fact this should be a serious concern. In the 10e arrondissement, our existence—revolving as it does around food—started to seem grim at the end of July. First to go was our cheese shop. As the weeks went by the tables and shelves in the shop had progressively emptied out. On the last day they were open, as I bought scraps of whatever was left, I asked the cheese monger what we were going to do while they were closed. “Eat less calories,” he said. It was a joke but he wasn’t smiling. He was just eager to go on holiday.

Next to go was the Italian deli, then the covered market where we get fish and vegetables. The famous boulangerie at the end of our street shut down for a month—an entire MONTH—in August. Every day I texted G. as I walked to the metro to tell her how many dejected tourists were standing on the sidewalk, scratching their heads and trying to decipher the scrawled note in the window. Then the boulangerie with the good baguette closed. Then the new bakery with the seedy bread and the donuts, which had literally opened two weeks before, also closed for two weeks. Even the bakery with the lovely seasonal cakes and pastries, which is a little further off near the Marais and which I sometimes walk to on Sundays, went on vacation. They didn’t even bother putting a note up on their door.

I remember a Wednesday morning in mid-August when I walked around the neighbourhood, going from street to street, struggling to find a place where I could buy bread. I ended up at a small, subpar place near République, and we had to make do with their dry croissant and weightless loaf. Yes, even in Paris, there is such a thing as a subpar boulangerie.

August 15 is a holiday in France, and as it fell on a Thursday this year most of those who weren’t already on vacation took a day or two off to make a long weekend of it. In French they call it faire le pont—bridging. The city emptied out. At work, for the few of us who were around, almost all the lunch places were closed. Even the lunch delivery company was off that Friday.

And I haven’t mentioned anything about the heat (Parisian apartments don’t have ai conditioning)—but perhaps that’s a story for another time.

Sure, there are some things to appreciate about August in Paris. It’s true that the streets are quieter, and the metro isn’t as crowded. You grow to have a special fondness for the shops and restaurants that do stay open, like the boucherie near my workplace that took all of July off instead of August. The Tunisian man and his son who have a vegetable stall around the corner from our apartment stayed open through August, as did the Mexican taco place across the street and our favourite takeout restaurant, Petit Cambodge. Although our caviste did go away on holiday for two weeks in August, she found someone to work at the shop in her place. So at least we could drink well, even if we couldn’t always eat as well as usual. It makes you question your priorities.

And now la rentrée is in full swing; this period marks the end of our first year living in Paris. We moved into our apartment exactly a ago and started discovering the neighbourhood, trying out cafés and bakeries, walking along the canal to go to the Bastille market for the first time, testing out habits and routines that would last us through the winter. When we arrived in Paris at the very end of August 2018 to find a lively 10^e arrondissement, I hadn’t suspected that the city was just coming back to life after a month-long sleep.

The end of our first year in Paris, yes, but also the beginning of our second. We’ve been eating a lot of cheese.