Went back CDG · Paris
I went back to Paris and left my afternoons open
In the 12th arrondissement, a Friday market, a stranger’s help, and an afternoon in Starbucks gave me plenty to do without making a plan.
Written and photographed by Ethan Ward
Went: 2 months
First time · About 6 weeks
This time · 2 months, 5 years later. I’ve gone back every year in between.
What changed · I already knew my way around the 12th. In August, the streets I knew were emptier, and some shops had notices saying when they’d reopen.
I was trying to buy fruit when a man at a market in Paris started asking whether I wanted to pay with my health insurance card.
“Carte Vitale? Carte Vitale?”
He was cracking himself up. I had said “carte,” meaning I wanted to pay by card, and was now trying to work out what had happened to the transaction.
A woman beside me with a child in a stroller stepped in. She spoke English and explained the joke: the Carte Vitale is a French health insurance card. He was asking if that was how I planned to pay for my produce.
Apparently, this was the height of comedy at the market. I was laughing too, telling her that on Duolingo I was killing it. Reading, listening, all of it. Then I would try to speak French to an actual person and get completely tripped up.
“It’s okay, just keep practicing,” she said.
I’d been walking to Starbucks when I came across the market. It was a Friday afternoon. I was used to finding these things on weekends, so I stopped. The vendors were calling prices and jokes across the stalls, chatting with customers they seemed to know. One woman, surrounded by children I thought she said were her grandchildren, explained in slow, patient French which peaches were ready to eat that day and which needed until tomorrow.
I bought both kinds.
By the time I left, I had 2 cases of strawberries, a huge thing of grapes, 4 peaches, 3 plums, 2 mangoes, half a watermelon, 2 cucumbers, and 2 peppers. €13. I had also received a little encouragement about my French. After that exchange, I was glad to have it.
This was August in the 12th arrondissement, one of the parts of Paris I keep returning to. I usually rent the same sublet. Over the years, I’ve learned where to do my laundry, where to get my nails done, and where I can sit with a coffee and work. I recognize the people working in the little grocery shop. I have favorite spots in the park for watching everyone else go about their day.
There’s a pleasure in arriving somewhere and already knowing how to do the ordinary things. I don’t need to spend the first morning working out where everything is. I can get dressed, leave the apartment, and see what happens.
In August, even those familiar streets felt different. Shops had notices on their doors announcing when they would reopen. The morning rush was lighter. I found seats on the Métro. I could hear birds. Near Parc de Bercy and the Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand, there was so much space that I could exercise outside and actually enjoy it.
Around Daumesnil, I photographed empty chairs and shuttered storefronts in the middle of the day.
Paris’s tourist office notes that many smaller shops take their annual holiday between mid-July and the end of August. Along my usual routes, the breaks were visible. A place I knew would be closed; a street I expected to be busy would be empty. I liked having enough familiarity with the neighborhood to notice the difference.
By the time I was sitting in Starbucks, I had an iced coffee and something to write about. The man next to me was on the phone, speaking French much faster than anything in my lessons. I couldn’t follow the conversation, but I was following lunch.
He cut his ham sandwich carefully. Or maybe it was a croque-monsieur. He paused between bites to make a point, took a sip of iced coffee, used his napkin. A purple donut waited on his tray.
I found the whole thing comforting. The French around me. His gestures as he talked. The care he was taking over a sandwich in Starbucks while I sat there with my own drink, in no particular hurry to finish it.
Dilly dallying in Paris is one of my favorite things to do. I leave the apartment curious about where I’ll end up. Sometimes I walk beyond the streets I know and find a shop that only sells buttons, or a café where older men are playing chess. Sometimes it’s a courtyard I hadn’t noticed. Sometimes it’s a hot guy outside a tiny boulangerie, both of us trying to work out whether it’s open or someone has forgotten to turn the sign around.
A closed door can be inconvenient. I still want my coffee. But on an afternoon like this, I have time to keep walking. I can stop at a market I hadn’t planned to visit and take long enough over the purchase for someone to make a joke I need translated.
I like coming back to Paris for that. Knowing my way around leaves more of the day open. There are things I could go and see, and some days I do. This afternoon, buying fruit and sitting with an iced coffee has been enough.
The man beside me has finished his sandwich. He’s still on the phone, folding his napkin and gathering his things. Outside, the afternoon stretches on.
I have nowhere to be until dinner.
Perfect.
What I noticed
The return dates on the doors sent me looking into the annual holidays behind them.
If you keep going back to the same place, so do I. The first email I send you asks where yours is.
Free. One email a month. I never sell your address.
