It Takes a Village

Being a tourist in Paris is perhaps the most that some can wish for, yet you miss much by being just a tourist. To stay in Paris for an extended time, say two weeks, maybe even a month opens up a new, intimate experience. Instead of waking up in hotel, thinking how you must use the day because you only have a few and must make the most of them, you wake up to face a day of living in Paris. Not faced with the need to get it all in at once you can make much more progress towards getting it all in better, more fully, because you have time to let it unfold for you at a pace that both you and Paris are comfortable with. Eating is no longer a choice among cafés and bistros unknown to you. You get to go to the local village because you see, Paris is a collection of villages and you can live a village life in the middle of this major city. My village is centered in Place Maubert. I pass through it every day, say hello to the baker, the cremier, the cavist, and the butcher. We know each other from a hundred transactions. The ladies in the cheese shop know how much I like the brebis and will smile as I take home far too much. The wine shop knows that I will buy the Pineau de Charante that I discovered on a visit to the Cognac region and we will talk about the little village of Ecoyeux where the neighbor was happy to give me a liter bottle of the same Pineau, straight from the tap. My friends ask what I do for a month in Paris, how can I tell them that I just live there?