Unfinished Business: Paris Diary, Day Five

Back in Batignolles

Dear Wanderers,

It occurs to me now that I returned to Paris because I had unfinished business in this beautiful, maddening, complicated city.

Paris in the evening, my old neighborhood

Before I traveled here, I had second thoughts. Would Paris make me sad? Would being in Paris alone make me lonely? Would it make me regret leaving? Would it make me regret returning?

I have been here for five days, and have already cycled through all of those feelings. In Paris, melancholy descends with a quiet intensity. But it lifts just as quickly, because Paris is just so beautiful. It is chaotic and loud, it is smoky and crowded, it is an assault on the senses. I’ve had strange allergy flare-ups, which may be something I ate (though I’ve subsisted mostly on bread and cheese), or may just be my eyes reacting to the smoke in the air.

But it’s beautiful. Most beautiful at night, when things have gone quiet, the construction has ended, and people are turning off their lights.

view from my Airbnb in Batignolles

I switched from the Left Bank to the Right Bank yesterday, from rue de Seine to Batignolles, where you don’t see so many tourists, you don’t hear English spoken loudly on the streets, and where locals go about their work and family lives. It is bustling and friendly. The bakery we used to frequent here is closed, but I found another one a few doors down with a friendly proprietor and wonderful bread, where you can get a croissant and a coffee for two euros. I bought metro tickets. I walked through Parc Monceau to our old apartment and saw through the windows that someone is living there.

our old apartment

I went into the Franprix to buy magnesium water—which I discovered early in our Paris days—because it settles the mind and helps you sleep. For some reason, last night, it did not help me sleep. I called my husband. I said, “I can’t sleep.” He said, “It’s because of the time difference.”

Oh, I forgot the nine-hour time difference. Today, cocooned in a tiny apartment in a familiar neighborhood, I slept until 10 a.m.

I feel more at home now that I’m in this neighborhood, instantly settled. The video above is from the corner of rue de Levis, a view of the busy Monoprix where we used to do much of our grocery shopping.

I’ve fallen in love with the city again. It’s not hard to do.

Over the phone, my husband asked, “Have you gotten Paris out of your system?”

“Not quite,” I told him. “Not yet.”

If you liked this post, you might enjoy the first two parts of this series: Adventures on rue de Seine and Cool Blue Morning. You can find my older Paris stories, including a video and photo essay about walking through the empty streets of Paris during lockdown, here.

Coming soon: meeting my old friend Stefania. author of "Η τέχνη μου να Είμαι εγώ'' (My Art of Being Me), whom I connected with kind of magically through art and social media during the pandemic