Monday, August 27, 2007
Ten years in Paris
This month will be my tenth year living in the city of Paris. To somehow celebrate this event I thought of starting this blog today. Ten years ago this month I was fortunate enough to have moved to Paris. This was after living a short time in the city of Lyon.
The odd event of Princess Diana's death would mark my arrival. The birth of my neighbor's youngest daughter would happily occur over the same time while unpacking.
It is a bit of a surprise to me that I'm still in Paris. This was not necessarily something that I thought of as permanent, at least not as much as it has turned out to be.
I'm living in the center of the city. It's a neighborhood that has changed quite a bit since my move. The city of Paris is broken into twenty districts that are called arrondissements (always a difficult word to pronounce). I live in the second arrondissement located just behind the Palais Royal, and about two blocks away from the Bourse. This is the name for the building that houses the French stock market. Throughout the history of this neighborhood it has always been a place centered on business and information. Along with being a major center for money it was also where most of the newspapers had their main offices. The French Associated Press offices are still around the corner from where I live. The old national library is located just across from my apartment building .
When I first moved to this neighborhood it was a silent part of town once the work day ended. Since it was always where people worked, it never felt like a neighborhood where people really lived. For a block or two around the building there has always been Japanese restaurants. Noodles and sushi didn't seem as popular to the Parisians ten years ago as they seem these days. This once dead quiet neighborhood comes alive with the Parisians looking for the more trendy cuisine located in my part of town. It's not really a "Chinatown", but a high concentration of nicer Japanese styled eateries. There are still a good number of take out Chinese/Japanese for the office workers in the neighborhood. These take second place to the nicer spots that continue to pop up in the four blocks around Place Louvois.
One of my favorite spots in Paris is the Palais Royal and the gardens there. Some visitors seem not to discover this garden almost hidden in the center of Paris. Now more people are discovering it for the new shops that have opened there in recent years. The shopping galleries there have seen the arrival of American designer Mark Jacobs and a number of more upscale shops. When I moved here there were mostly still only selling old stamps and historic medallions. This change has only made pleasant improvements to this already beautiful place.
I'm hoping to stay in Paris for another ten years or more if at all possible to see other improvements that time might bring to my adopted city. We'll see if I can maintain this blog over the coming months.
The photo at the top of this post is an old one of the square in front of my building. This is the Place Louvois.
The odd event of Princess Diana's death would mark my arrival. The birth of my neighbor's youngest daughter would happily occur over the same time while unpacking.
It is a bit of a surprise to me that I'm still in Paris. This was not necessarily something that I thought of as permanent, at least not as much as it has turned out to be.
I'm living in the center of the city. It's a neighborhood that has changed quite a bit since my move. The city of Paris is broken into twenty districts that are called arrondissements (always a difficult word to pronounce). I live in the second arrondissement located just behind the Palais Royal, and about two blocks away from the Bourse. This is the name for the building that houses the French stock market. Throughout the history of this neighborhood it has always been a place centered on business and information. Along with being a major center for money it was also where most of the newspapers had their main offices. The French Associated Press offices are still around the corner from where I live. The old national library is located just across from my apartment building .
When I first moved to this neighborhood it was a silent part of town once the work day ended. Since it was always where people worked, it never felt like a neighborhood where people really lived. For a block or two around the building there has always been Japanese restaurants. Noodles and sushi didn't seem as popular to the Parisians ten years ago as they seem these days. This once dead quiet neighborhood comes alive with the Parisians looking for the more trendy cuisine located in my part of town. It's not really a "Chinatown", but a high concentration of nicer Japanese styled eateries. There are still a good number of take out Chinese/Japanese for the office workers in the neighborhood. These take second place to the nicer spots that continue to pop up in the four blocks around Place Louvois.
One of my favorite spots in Paris is the Palais Royal and the gardens there. Some visitors seem not to discover this garden almost hidden in the center of Paris. Now more people are discovering it for the new shops that have opened there in recent years. The shopping galleries there have seen the arrival of American designer Mark Jacobs and a number of more upscale shops. When I moved here there were mostly still only selling old stamps and historic medallions. This change has only made pleasant improvements to this already beautiful place.
I'm hoping to stay in Paris for another ten years or more if at all possible to see other improvements that time might bring to my adopted city. We'll see if I can maintain this blog over the coming months.
The photo at the top of this post is an old one of the square in front of my building. This is the Place Louvois.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)