Paris | Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

Our Christmas Menu

Posted on January 5, 2021 by Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

Like so many people around the world, we spent the 2020 Holidays far from our families. In fact, it was the first time I’ve ever spent Christmas away from my family and outside of Québec. G. and I decided to make the best of the situation, and we spent much of December decorating, shopping, and planning our own Christmas celebrations.

The rules in France allowed for up to six people to meet for dinner on Christmas Eve — the only day during the current “lockdown” period when the usual 8 p.m. curfew was lifted. We invited four of our friends over to our apartment, dressed the table with vintage crystal and porcelain and heaps of wintry leaves, and planned an extra-special meal for the occasion.

We hesitated at first about what exactly we wanted to cook. I initially had an idea for a traditional, vegetarian British-style Christmas meal with a nut roast, roasted potatoes, a parsnip purée, and gravy. G. on the other hand wanted to make a saumon en croûte, a sort of salmon wellington, which felt festive and special. But in the end, and after consulting with some French people like G.’s hairdresser, we felt it was more appropriate to go down the traditional French route, which means seafood and foie gras. The added advantage was that we could easily order things, prepare what needed to be prepared in advance, and the meal itself required almost no cooking.

Our feast started with a specially crafted Christmas cocktail. I love making up cocktails for specific occasions, so I thought long and hard about what I wanted to make for Christmas this year. I went down the route of the whiskey sour, feeling that the citrus element was nice and sharp to start the meal, and there was something quite cheerful about the foamy egg white. To make it more seasonal I used some bergamot juice in addition to the lemon juice, and I infused my simple syrup with ginger and bergamot peel as well to get more depth of flavour. The make it more festive I finished it with a star anise floating in the froth. It was delicious and a nice way to welcome our guests.

Although we wanted to go down the traditional French route with our meal, we started with an exotic twist: as one of our friends is from Columbia, his partner wanted to treat him to some Columbian snacks, so the appetizers were traditional Columbian goodies she had ordered from a specialist caterer in Paris: empanads, pan de bonos, patacones, and yuca fries. We ate these tasty snacks with some Pierre Gimonnet champagne we picked up in Epernay when we went there for a weekend back in the fall, before France returned in lockdown.

We then sat down for our feast of the sea. We had ordered oysters from a local restaurant that has converted itself to selling baskets of dairy products, fruit & veg, and seafood from their producers while the restaurant is closed. Langoustines with spicy mayo and scallop sashimi came from Sur Mer, another local restaurant that currently offers takeaway meals and seafood platters. The scallop, served raw, thinly sliced in its shell and accompanied with its sharp little dressing, was definitely one of the highlights.

I had prepared two fish elements the day before: salmon gravlax and a smoked haddock rillette. I love making salmon gravlax and I find it to be a perfect Holiday appetizer, and I’ve made some in the past with juniper, gin, and beetroot which tints the salmon flesh a beautiful pink colour. But this year I wanted a cleaner, fresh taste so I went with lemon zest, pink peppercorn, and a little bit of ground coriander seeds as my aromatics. It was delicious sliced very thin on bitter red and white endive leaves with little dollops of crème fraîche with some lemon zest and chives mixed in it. The smoked haddock rillette was something I’d never done before, and I don’t quite know where I got the idea for it but it seemed right, and it ended up being one of the more popular things on our menu! I simply bought some smoked haddock fillet, I cooked them gently in milk, then flaked the flesh and mixed it with some home made mayonnaise, a bit of lemon juice, pepper, and a chopped chives. Delicious spread on some croutons!

In addition, I also picked up some duck mi-cuit foie gras at the Grande Épicerie when I went to do some Christmas shopping there earlier in December, so I served some of that on toast with dabs of onion chutney and cherry compote. Our friend also brought some fois gras along so we had more than enough and I still have some leftover in the fridge.

G. loves the British tradition of Christmas crackers, and she wanted to make them extra special this year so she ordered some that came still open and only had the joke and the paper crowns in them. We filled them with some nougats and caramel au beurre salé from George Larnicol, our favorite chocolatier. G. also prepared a special surprise for the digestif: she filled little glass bottles with a selection of brown alcohols — for example calvados, whiskey, rum and armagnac — then numbered and sealed the bottles with wax. We each had to guess what alcohol we had. As it turned out, only one of us got it right! It was a fun game to add some entertainment and joy to the evening, in addition to a more traditional blind gift exchange.

After a cheese course of Morbier and Mont d’Or, we dug into our bûche: a classic French Christmas dessert (also traditional in Québec) which is basically a cake in the form of a log, which can often be rolled. My mother usually makes a delicious chocolate, mint, and vanilla ice-cream bûche for Christmas, and I toyed with the idea of trying to make it, but I decided that I could never make anything as good as what I could buy in Paris!

Every chocolatier, bakery, and pastry shop has their own selection of bûche and I spent a good part of December agonizing about which one I wanted, comparing designs and flavour profiles, until I decided to contact our favourite pâtisserie shop, Muscade, located in the Jardin du Palais-Royal. They’re particularly good at adding modern twists to traditional desserts. It turned out that they did have a Christmas bûche that fit what we were looking for: inspired by a Mont Blanc, it had a bit of meringue with lots of chestnut mousse and cream, and some sharp passion fruit gel in the middle to offset the sweetness. It was the right choice and the perfect way to end the meal.

Although we were very sad not to be able to spend precious time with our families this year, it was nice to be able to organize the celebration we wanted (within the restrictions, of course) and make the most of some of the beautiful products and traditions of France. Given the circumstances, we wanted to organize a party that was fun and memorable, and I think we managed it!

Samuel Beckett, Boulevard Saint Jacques, 1985

Posted on June 4, 2020 by Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

I can’t remember having any other background image on my computer’s desktop than a picture of the Irish author Samuel Beckett. The picture was taken by the Irish photographer John Minihan in 1985, in Paris. The photograph, in black and white, shows a grizzled, wrinkled Beckett sitting at a table of the terrasse of a café. On the table in front of him are two cups of coffee, and an ashtray towards which Beckett is reaching to stub out a cigarette. The location is evident from the writing on the windows of the café behind him: croissants, glace. The light–coming off diffuse from tthe left, combined with the reflection of the round café lights in the window and on the ceiling–is exquisite. Beckett, despite the intricacies of his wrinkled face, that remarkable hawk-like nose, the streak of dark hair swirling off his forehead, looks a little worse for wear in his thin coat and mottled scarf, but that’s all part of the charm.

The picture is somewhat famous, sometimes recognized as one of the most remarkable photographs of the 20th century. It’s certainly definitive of a time and place, and of Paris as a home for expatriate artists. There’s a compelling account of how Minihan took the picture on his website: how he approached Beckett in advance of the writer’s 80th birthday, and most importantly how Beckett controlled the session, choosing the time and place, late on a Sunday afternoon in December, the light fading fast and Minihan finally managing to snap the shot while Beckett “orchestrated” the picture, changing his demeanour and turning his gaze away from the camera. “They turned out better than I expected because Sam directed the whole scene,” Minihan wrote in The Guardian in 2012.

The truth is that I’ve never read anything by Samuel Beckett–not even Waiting for Godot. The reason why I’ve liked to look at that picture for the last 10+ years is the expression on Beckett’s face, which is hard to describe: worn, focused, distant. The two coffee cups reveals the presence of the photographer, but it creates a certain false intimacy with the viewer–she could be the one with him, sitting at that table, being ignored while Beckett sighs, lost in his own thoughts.

For me that picture represents an idealization of the artist’s mindset. There’s something captivating about the intensity and melancholy of that focused gaze. This is the picture of an artist who takes their work seriously, who gets up early to write, who spends the time in hard chairs, who, shy of his 80th birthday, 16 years after having been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, warms his throat with an ancient scarf. He looks worn down by his own ideas. Looking at that picture makes me want to get to work.

Even now that I know that Becket was posing, I don’t find the image false. Beckett knew exactly what he was doing, enacting a form of control over the art; but that, after all, is the writer’s credo, to be in absolute control of the craft. To reach the ring of truth, a writer has to toil and whittle and pose, and then hide all the work.

Sans Terrasse: Paris in the Time of Coronavirus

Posted on March 21, 2020 by Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

We returned to Paris from a one-week vacation on Sunday, March 15, not entirely knowing that to expect. Schools in France, as well as bars, cafés, restaurants, shops, and other “non-essential” businesses, were closed. G. and I had both been warned that we would be working from home for at least two weeks, but that we could return to our offices if necessary.

The Sunday we returned was warm and sunny; it felt like the first day of Spring. Along the Canal Saint-Martin, at the end of our street, young people were drinking and talking in small groups, enjoying themselves and the weather — and going against the government’s recommendations to stay at home and self-isolate.

On Monday I popped over to my office early to grab my work laptop and bring it home to start my first day of work-from-home, which is already known by its acronym WFH. Then the “confinement” proper began. Chatting with my colleagues over Microsoft Teams, we exchanged rumours: that the “quarantine” would last for 45 days, that the government was going to bring in the army to enforce the stay-at-home rules. By the end of the day we were told that we would no longer be able to go to the office at all since there had been someone in the building who has infected.

While I dealt with work emergencies–communicating, strangely, on the very situation we were in–G. went out to fill up our stock of provisions, waiting for over 30 minutes to get into the store. Most people around the world have witnessed this by now: empty store shelves: no rice, no pasta, no canned vegetables, no toilet paper…

That evening, Emmanuel Macron gave a somewhat patronizing address to the nation. He mentioned several times that we were at war, although he made no mention of the army. He informed us that the European Union would be closing its borders for 30 days. He reiterated the need to stay at home, to go out only for essential activities. We learned that the next day, on Tuesday March 17, at noon, we would need to print or copy out a paper to go outside of homes for a valid reason: buy necessities, go to a medical appointment, go to work (if it is essential), to take care of a person in need, or to practice a brief physical activity or take care of a pet.

On Tuesday morning, unbeknownst to us, the city emptied out as those who could drove off or took the last trains out to their country houses or to stay with family or friends in the provinces. I went out to shop in the early afternoon, duly copying out my little “attestation” and even bringing my passport with me in case. The streets were nearly deserted, but foods shops were open. The butcher had a table set up right at this door. One of the bakeries I like, Mamiche, was selling their goods out of the window, with a little sign that said “We are still smiling under our masks.” Some of the caviste’s shelves were empty. “It was very busy this morning,” she said. “But as as soon as noon struck everyone went home.” I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to touch the bottles or not; we agreed that it was better if I didn’t. At the Marché Saint-Martin, the stalls were full of produce. I bought everything I needed at the greengrocer’s, as well salmon from the fishmonger’s, which was also well stocked. It could’ve been like any other day, except with fewer customers. The fishmonger was filling out his own “attestation” to go home, later.

We stay at home and go out as little as possible. We try to maintain a normal work schedule, take time away from our computers during lunch, close up and not check our work emails during the evening. A small comfort buoys us at the end of the work day: people open their windows at 8 p.m. and applaud the healthcare workers. You get the sense that people are also clapping for themselves, encouraging each other. At first I admit I found the idea a little cheesy, but now we make a point of joining in. It’s cheerful, and it’s nice to smile at the neighbours across the way.

These are times for empathy, to try and imagine what it’s like to be a healthcare worker, a grocery store clerk, a homeless person. Today I had to go out several times to the laundromat and to buy some food at the market; I was stopped by three different homeless people wanting money, or asking to use my phone… The apartment just across the street from us is inhabited by a couple our age with a newborn that can’t be older than a week or so. What is it like to be new parents at a time like this, with friends and family unable to visit?

What is Paris without its terrasses, its cafés, its bistros, its museums? Well, Paris is also made of the beautiful intimacy of its neighbourhoods: the chit-chat of your caviste, the smile of the boulangère under a mask.

Grève & Résilience

Posted on January 14, 2020 by Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

At the time of writing we are now more than a month into a national strike–the Métro announcements refer to it as a mouvement social–in France that started on December 5. The strikers are a hodgepodge of different groups of workers including teachers, employees of France’s national energy company, the national railway company, the Paris Métro, and other fonctionnaires (civil servants). They are protesting against a government retirement reform, which includes a progressive end to so-called “special regimes,” that seeks to align all state pension funds under the same program.

Incredibly, the massive strike actually began almost a week before the government had even announced the details of its new plan. Just the fact that they would be seeking a reorganization of the retirement system was enough to kick-off the movement.

The French people’s love for striking and demonstrating is legendary. Before we moved to Paris our friends and families warned us about two things: it would be bitterly cold in our apartment during the winter, and we would most certainly suffer through some kind of transportation strike. Both predictions have now come true.

As it happened G. and I had a weekend in London planned in early December; we were meant to head out on the Eurostar on December 6. We watched, somewhat powerless, as all the trains were cancelled one after the other. In the end G. managed to rebook us on an earlier train on Wednesday the 4th–we were on the last Eurostar to London before the beginning of the strike. We were also lucky to make it back on Monday morning on one of the trains that wasn’t cancelled.

Since then it’s taken a lot of improvising, and sometimes pure grit, to get to and from wherever you need to go in Paris, with some trial and error. To get to work for most of December I had to walk from our apartment near Place de la République all the way to Bastille in order to grab Line 1–one of the two “automatic” lines that have stayed open with some consistency since the beginning of the grève. I’ve been among the lucky ones. G., whose office is in the 7th arrondissement, spent most of December working for home. When she did have to go in to the office, it took her over an hour on foot. And of course taxis and Ubers are nearly out of the question, the wait times and prices (for Ubers, anyway) being inflated due to high demand. Some of the bus lines run, but they’re often so full that it’s hard to get on. As for the Velib’ (Paris’ public bicycle sharing system), friends have reported that the docks near their flats are usually empty.

What surprised me the most as the grève unfurled is that the French, for whom complaining is usually a national sport, seem to have taken it all in stride. Of course there’s some huffing after a particularly bad commute, but most of the time they just seem to get on with their day without too much of a fuss. We often remark upon the stoic resilience of the English (“stay calm and carry on”), but in this case the resilience of Parisians in front of truly appalling transportation situation has been admirable.

It was a different story the other day when I attended my English language book club, where all the participants are expats. The first topic of discussion before we began talking about the book was the grève: how hard it was to get anywhere, how tired everyone was of walking, how no one back home understood how dependent we were on public transportation. We all whined more than the French people I know!

A few weeks before Christmas, the holiday plans for several of my coworkers seemed to be in jeopardy since many trains to the provinces were cancelled. But then, as if by miracle, at the last minute everyone was able to rebook their tickets. Over the holidays the Métro closures loosened a bit, and now in January most lines are open during commuting hours in the mornings and evenings, although major stations remain closed “for security reasons.” The grève goes on, but it seems perfectly engineered–fine tuned, even–to annoy without bringing the city (and country) to a complete halt.

This social movement has now officially become the country’s longest strike in 30 years and the longest in the history of the SNCF, France’s national railway company. The government has begun to concede on a few points, but there’s still no end in sight. In the meantime, checking Citymapper is essential every time I leave the house.

August in Paris

Posted on September 5, 2019 by Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

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^earrondissement, 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.

Rue Saint-Martin: A Promenade

Posted on December 17, 2018 by Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

I’m not the first to say it: Paris is a walker’s city, or rather an ambler’s city. The streets urge you to go out for promenades, to make it from place to place on foot, to wander about. There are some risks, though. For one, everything seems closer that it is on the map. Then there’s the city’s famous street configuration, all branching stars and obliquely crossings. If you’re not careful, you can easily think you’re going in the right direction on a given street and end up far from where you were going.

One of my favourite walks in Paris is, thankfully, along a street that runs straight down–from the 10th to the 3rd arrondissement, from Gare de l’Est all the way down to the Seine, or just about. It’s a neat way to easily get from the neighbourhood we live in to the Marais, which has nice shops, bars, and restaurants–and heaps of atmosphere. I love walking down the length of the street because you feel the textures of the different neighbourhoods change as you walk through them.

Your promenade begins on rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin, which is lively and full of local colour just below the imposing façade of Gare de l’Est: fast-food joints, African restaurants, bric-à-brac stores, and Afro hair salons. Rue du Chateau d’Eau and its fancier shops, wine stores, cafés, and lovely market runs perpendicular. When you reach the imposing Porte Saint-Martin, which is really more of an arch than a gate, at the boulevard, the street because rue Saint-Martin, and already you know that you’re in a slightly posher neighbourhood, especially as you pass the imposing facade of the Musée des Arts et Métiers and the elegant Square Émile-Chautemps. On the same block are the intriguing offices of the French Prestidigitator’s Association, which unfortunately always looks closed.

Past rue Réaumur, pay attention to the blackened façade of the Paroisse Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, a gothic church dating back to the 15th century, with its crumbling statues. A couple of blocks later is a nice third wave coffee shop called Partisan, and now you can be certain you’re in the 3rd: the buildings are nicer and well-kept, people are dressed in fancy clothes, and the shops are getting more expensive and niche–notice the Corsican épicerie and the Auvergne deli. Another couple of blocks down you’ll run into a shop specializing in rum, and just around the corner is its sister store, which sells hundreds of different kinds of gin.

But keep going, you haven’t seen everything yet. If you’re hungry, the next block has lots of restaurants, including a delicious Chinese noodle place called 3 fois plus de piments, although you may have to get in line at peak hours. Once you do get in, you choose your heat level: 0 to 5 (1 is enough to make my eyebrows sweat). As you keep walking down, the street becomes mostly pedestrian and when the buildings open up, lo and behold, the Centre Pompidou is on your left. Take a moment to gaze at its stunning, divisive architecture. The rooftop restaurant, all metal and curvy structures, is a nice place for a drink and a rare vista over the city.

From there, you have to pick what you want to do next. Turn right at the river and continue along the Seine all the way to the Louvre and the Tuileries, or else cross over to Île de la Cité and, from there, across again into the 5th arrondissements. Or turn right to delve into the Marais proper. Crooked, charming rue des Rosiers, with its jewish bakeries and extraordinary falafel shops, is only five minutes away…

Cités millénaires @ L’Institut du monde arabe

Posted on November 1, 2018 by Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

The other day we took the metro down to the Institut du monde arabe (IMA), which is located in a beautiful silve building in the 5e arrondissement, right along the Seine behind the Pierre and Marie Curie University, and not too far from the Jardins des Plantes and its fun Ménagerie (yes, we said hello to the red pandas and wallabies on the way).

The IMA is currently hosting an exhibit called Cités millénaires (Age-Old Cities), a collaboration with the French startup Iconem, whose representatives we met a few weeks ago at Unesco during the European Heritage Days. Iconem specializes in digitizing and creating 3D models of heritage sites and monuments that are either at risk of being destroyed, or else hard to access.

The exhibit at the IMA is in fact an immersive experience with gigantic projections and contextualizing videos, focused around four sites: Mosul, Aleppo, Leptis Magna (a Roman site in Lybia), and Palmyra. Although I found that the exhibition lacked a little bit of context and explanations (I don’t mind going to the museum to read some panels) or even voiceovers, overall the giant projections with smoothly panning 3D models and atmospheric music were absolutely breathtaking. I even had some shivers, especially seeing the famous theatre and temples of Palmyra, which were the stage of so many horrors during its takeover by the so-called Islamic State. It was also amazing to witness the scale of the destruction in Aleppo and Mosul.

The exhibit ends with a short VR experience, created by video game studio Ubisoft, that allows you to experience the sights, sounds, and even smells of six specific monuments as if you were really there. We were told that the exhibit gets busy and the lineup for the VR can go up to an hour, but we went first thing in the morning (and bought our tickets in advance)–we were sometimes alone in the exhibition rooms, and we didn’t wait at all for the VR experience, which felt a little short but was really immersive. I especially enjoyed being inside the temple of Baalshamin in Palmyra, which soldiers of ISIL blew up in 2015.

Overall, we had a great time and really appreciated the work of Iconem has been doing to document these sites and monuments. Is it enough? No, of course not. But at least it’s something, and it allows researchers to study and record sites that might otherwise be lost before they were documented. The exhibit also does a pretty good job of addressing not only the loss of buildings and monuments, but also the human lives that have ended or been shattered. A text accompanying images of the Souk of Aleppo, for example, reminds us that beyond the material loss, what made the souk itself was the relationships between the stall owners and the shoppers who went there ever day.

I also enjoyed the very well stocked bookstore at the IMA, which has an impressive selection of books related to the Middle East–contemporary novels, books in translation and in Arabic, academic works, cookbooks… We walked away with a small phrasebook to refresh our Egyptian Arabic, and plans to come back very soon.

The Cités millénaires exhibit runs at the IMA in Paris until February 10, 2019.

Canal Life

Posted on October 20, 2018 by Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

Our neighbourhood in Paris runs along the Canal Saint-Martin, a stretch of water that runs off the Seine at Place de la Bastille and runs along a north-easterly path, joining the Canal Saint-Denis north of the Basin de la Villette to become the Canal de l’Ourcq. The canal’s greenish waters, flagstone quays, families of ducks, iron pedestrian bridges, and bubbling locks, provide an atmospheric backdrop to the life of neighbourhood, and is a sight many tourists never set eyes on.

The canal was originally built in the 19th century to supply water to parts of the city and for transport of grain and other goods to Paris. There are amazing old pictures of women washing clothes at purpose-built laundry stations along the canal at the turn of the century. One of the canal’s most interesting features is that a large section of it runs underground along vaulted tunnels pierced by large skylights. Up above, on the ground level, there is a long stretch of park where people play pétanque or walk their dogs, one section of which, along Avenue Richard-Lenoir, is home to our favourite Sunday market.

Women washing clothes along the canal.

Some tour companies offer boat rides up and down the canal, so you can glide along under the atmospheric vaults yourself, see the charming 10e arrondissement from a different point of view, and get splashed by the locks as they fill up rather dramatically (if you make your way up the canal from Port de l’Arsenal to the Bassin de la Villette–some of the tours go down the canal instead up). You’ll have to be patient, however, as the locks and swinging bridges make for a long and very slow cruise along the canal.

Under the vault.

For most inhabitants, however, the canal is mostly a perfect place to relax with a picnic and some wine or beer. During the week, people who work nearby love to sit along the quay and enjoy some sunshine during their break for déjeuner, while far into the night the area is alive with groups of young people enjoying themselves in the open air.

Every few years, authorities drain the canal in order to clean out the rubbish that inevitably falls (or is thrown) into it and remains at the bottom: bicycles, cameras, bottles… Even cars, and–yes–guns. There’s a great article about it over at The Guardian.

I’ll leave you with an excerpt of Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain, in which Amélie takes part in one of her favourite activities: standing on one of the lock gates and skipping stones on the canal.

Aux Puces

Posted on October 9, 2018 by Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

There is a place, just outside the périphérique ring road, not far from where Line 4 of the Métro ends at Porte de Clignancourt. It’s an uncanny place where you can find treasures and trash in equal measure. It’s a place so large you need more than one day to explore it all. It’s a place that will tire you out and leave you besotted and a little confused, but also charmed and delighted.

It’s called Le Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen, and it’s a must-go experience for anyone who’s seen the basic sights of Paris and is seeking an experience that’s a little different. To help give you a mental image, it’s there, in the Saint-Ouen Flea Market, that Owen Wilson’s character does some antique shopping in Woody Allen’s film Midnight in Paris.

G. and I went there a few weeks ago for the first time, and we were immediately struck by the sheer size of the place. This is, after all, the world’s largest and busiest antiques market in the world. The market is organized around Rue de Rosiers, with a number of stalls and smaller shops along passages off this street, plus larger covered markets such as Marché Dauphine and Marché Biron. There are small, messy brocante-style shops, niche stores specializing in everything from buttons to naval lamps, traditional antique dealers offering art, furniture, and smaller items from every epoch imaginable, as well as art merchants selling works that look like they should probably go in museum collections.

One thing we quickly realized while ambling along the rows and rows and rows of stalls is that you need to have a pretty clear idea of what you’re looking for–simply going around at random will soon drive you mad. On our first visit, we were able to find a nice copper bougeoir, a cheap, sleek, not-at-all-antique cocktail shaker, and a dressing mirror for G. However, our real goal had been crystal glasses. On our second round aux puces, were focused on these and, by chatting with different dealers, were able to come away with a pair of vintage champagne glasses as well as a pair of beautiful cut-crystal long drink glasses, all for a reasonable price which I’d rather not reveal.

The only regrettable thing with the market is that the surrounding area has attracted cheap clothes vendors as well as a number of “vendeurs à la sauvette” offering stolen or counterfeit brands.

Moving to Paris: A Reading List

Posted on September 26, 2018 by Charles-Adam Foster-Simard

I love compiling lists of books. I have running lists of books I’ve read, books I want to read, books I want to buy, books I need to consult for research, and books about places I’ve been to or places I’m going to.

From the moment I knew we would be moving to Paris, I compiled a list of great books set in the city that I wanted to read or re-read. That list keeps growing and changing every week, but here it is at the moment (and in no particular order).

A Place of Greater Safety, by Hilary Mantel

I’m an inveterate admirer of Mantel’s Cromwell books, so I’ve long wanted to read her brick-sized novel of the French revolution. It was the first book she wrote, although she had to wait a considerable number of years (and other books) before publishing it. I agree with critics that it could’ve done with less history, but you can definitely see in this carefully researched and intriguingly written novel the seeds of what Mantel would later do in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies: take figures who were at the periphery of power during a time of momentous change, and explore the fissures and stress points in their inner lives. I learned a lot about the main players behind the revolution, who were living day by day and, for the most part, had really no idea what they were doing. Also: what a great title.

A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway

How could I not? Like many others I loved this book as a teenager, when I romanticized Paris in the 20s, the Left Bank cafés, the artists, etc, etc. I quite enjoyed this second read-through, although I have to say the second half doesn’t live up to the promise of the first–too much time spent trying to undermine Scott Fitzgerald. Still, the description Hemingway conjures of writing in steamy cafés, ordering white wine and oysters, remains magical and unforgettable. Following the Paris attacks in 2015, the book became a bestseller in France.

Memoirs of Montparnasse, by John Glassco

I haven’t re-read this book yet but brought it with me to Paris to do so. I remember it being even better than Hemingway’s memoir when I read it in my early twenties. Glassco was a Canadian poet who also escaped to Montparnasse between the wars when he was just seventeen, and wrote his memoir of that time when he was living out his middle age in the Eastern Townships, on long afternoons buoyed by gin. Glassco’s account is somewhat fictionalized, but it’s a great read with fantastic sweep, and lots of charming raunch.

Au Bon Roman, by Laurence Cossé (in English: A Novel Bookstore, translated by Alison Anderson).

I fell pretty hard for this novel when I first read it back in 2010. It’s about two people who are somewhat disappointed by life, but they love reading good novels and open a bookstore together. The one thing that stayed with me the most from the book is that there’s a little trick with the narrator: you start thinking out that it’s in the third person, but then realize that it’s actually narrated from one of the characters. Upon re-reading it this summer I found some of the emotional impact somewhat lessened, but I was still taken with the beautifully created characters and the melancholy atmosphere. I love this novel because it is an unabashed celebration of the power of good literature.

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

I’d long meant to read this Dickens, for the most part because it’s among his shorter novels. As I was reading it this summer I did wonder where he was going with the crazy plot for most of the book, but by the end all of the pieces he had set up in the first part did come together and the story clicked into gear towards a satisfying ending. Dickens doesn’t really take the time describe Paris very well, but his vicious take on both the corrupted aristocracy and the blood-thirty crowds of revolutionaries is fun. He spares no one–as long as they’re French! I’m growing a bit tired of Dickens’ female characters, however, who are always based on the same sweet passive model.

The Ambassadors, by Henry James

This is one of James’ late, great masterpieces, and is the ultimate arriving-in-Paris read, so much so that I’ve been slowly savouring it since we arrived. James himself said that the best way to enjoy his books was to read about five pages a day, but to keep at it “without losing the thread.” In The Ambassadors, a wealthy American woman sends her middle-aged suitor, Strether, to Paris to convince her son, who may or may not be having an affair with a rich countess, to return to America. But then, against all odds, Strether begins to fall in love with Paris–the food, the artwork, the architecture, the atmosphere. As the novel progresses, it’s unclear who is corrupting whom. The pleasure of the novel is in witnessing Strether’s slow transformation, which sometimes looks more like self-delusion. The dialogues are also wonderfully witty.

Paris Trance, Geoff Dyer

Geoff Dyer is one of those writers that I’m still not sure what to make of. I read his books and I can’t say I enjoy them, exactly, but they make me think, and I do keep coming back to his work. I picked this novel up by chance when I saw it at Blackwell’s in Oxford this summer. What a treat: compulsive, self-aware, elegantly written, sexy, melancholy. It’s about a group of expat friends living from party to party in Paris in the 1990s, and the inevitable moment when the parties have to end. Dyer is better known for his non-fiction, but this novel proves he can do fiction just as well.

La Septième Fonction du Langage, by Laurent Binet (in English: The Seventh Function of Language, translated by Sam Taylor)

A follow-up to Binet’s sometimes frustrating but nonetheless compelling HHhH, his second novel is a crazy romp through the world of French philosophers in the early 80s. It begins with a simple but intriguing premise: the influential literary critic Roland Barthes died in 1980, struck by a van–what if he was actually murdered? The story is fast-paced and, in the end, becomes a little too heavy handed in its pastiche of Dan Brown-esque conspiracy thrillers, but the early scenes set in the houses and university offices of the likes of Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, and Kristeva are a delight. My favourite cameo is by Umberto Eco, who is, of course, the smartest of them all.

*All images taken from the publishers’ websites, or Wikipedia.