AngeLog

The sun shines til 10pm. Dinner comes even later. We eat raspberries and cherries in the afternoon. Croissants and baguettes from the boulangerie around the corner in the mornings. Parisians young and old, fashionable and, well, still fashionable, whiz by on bikes and scooters. They sit on cane chairs outside of cafes throughout the days drinking coffee and through the evenings drinking beer in the sun -every day of the week!

So after these observations I’ve decided you really need to be born here and brought up here to successfully pull all of this off. But it’s nice to drop in on the vibe for a week.

Yesterday we walked from our apartment in the Marais across the Seine to St Germain. Wandered through the famous Shakespeare & Co bookshop and then the less famous The Village Voice bookshop. Somewhere in between was a Camper store I managed to avoid buying something at. We took a Metro further out of town, found there was nothing there but saw the Eiffel Tower in the distance so walked towards it and finally under it.

A billboard ad told us there was a Bridget Riley exhibition on at the Musee d’Arts Moderne so we found it next, stopping outside at a fresh food market to get a small bag of fantastic olives.

Later in the afternoon we headed north on the bustling narrow footpaths in search of a record store. Luckily for me we found Maureen along the way and I’m now one green felt bag richer.

The evening brought with it a trip to Pigalle for a free gig by a Icelandic post-rock band at Divan du Monde. We then met up with Nick, a Sydney friend who has moved to Paris, and he took us to a grungy bar by a canal a couple of metro stops away in the 10th.