He was waiting for us on Rue Geoffroy l’Angevin, dressed in black, a ring of keys in his hand. Middle-aged, dark hair streaked with grey, looking every bit the Parisian. His English was fluent and unfussy, like someone who’d done this many times before. In a city that felt unfamiliar, our first Parisian conversation with an actual person was simply to open the door to our home for the next seven days.
We’d surfaced from the Rambuteau métro station a few minutes earlier, dragging our bags over the uneven pavement. We’d already learned on the cobblestoned streets in Amsterdam that ‘less is more’ when it comes to luggage. This time we’d done better. I’d been counting down to this moment for more than two hundred days, watching the number on my calendar shrink while I sat at my desk in Brisbane. On our New York trip five years earlier, we’d stayed at a midtown hotel and agreed this time would be different. No lobby, no breakfast buffet. We wanted a neighbourhood, not a sealed off version of one.
Everything in Paris is compact. By contrast, I am not. At 195cm I’m used to ducking under ceiling fans and doorframes, but this building took that to a new level. The lift was barely wider than my suitcase, so two people and two bags were out of the question. I wedged myself in with my bag and sent the lift back down for her turn at the same exercise. It felt less like conventional transportation and more like being posted upstairs slowly.
The apartment itself was just what we were looking for. It was clean, had a small table for eating, a lounge well-suited to afternoon champagne and the kitchen had all the necessary components. It was only when I sat down in the bathroom that the gap between the Paris in my head and the one I was sitting in really showed up. There just wasn’t the room to shut the door and when I looked up, I found myself staring straight into the neighbour’s kitchen window. It was a more honest version of ‘living here’ than anything I’d imagined.
Our first order of business as temporary Parisians wasn’t a museum or a monument. It was to stock the pantry. Stepping back onto the street, we were faced with more eating options than seemed reasonable. Across the road read a sign promising ‘Pain – Vin – Fromages,’ which sounded like a shopping list that covered all the food groups in one go. Sadly not open in the morning. On a nearby corner a café gave us croissants and coffee, a breakfast that might have felt a bit decadent at home but was entirely on point here.
Once refuelled and caffeinated, we went hunting for the shops we’d seen in all the guidebooks. In Australia, you drive to the supermarket and buy everything in one sweep of a well-lit supermarket. In the Marais there were new words for each part of the meal. The charcuterie for cured meats, the fromagerie for cheese and the boulangerie for bread. I found myself translating as we went, filing each small storefront under its Australian equivalent. The deli, the cheese shop and the bakery. For wine, there wasn’t a need for a specialist shop, with the narrow aisles of the supermarket lined with more bottles than our local bottle shop. I chose a bottle of champagne for afternoon drinks and upon going through the checkout the attendant said something to me in French. I looked at her blankly and she repeated her sentence much more forcefully. Sensing I was in trouble for something I looked around trying to disappear. An older lady who was next in the queue politely told me that the champagne I’d chosen was on a 2 for 1 special and I should get another bottle. Relieved for the help and pleased with a bargain I quickly grabbed another bottle feeling like I’d won the lottery.
We returned to the apartment carrying more food than made sense for two people staying for a week. Foie Gras, Pork Terrine, Croissants, Pain au chocolate, an assortment of cheeses with local names and some desserts still in their cardboard boxes. Spread out on the little table it looked more like a still life set up rather than essential provisions. As we put it away between the fridge and the pantry we were building an edible image of Paris just for us.
Before this trip I’d heard all the usual opinions about the city. Depending on who you listened to, Paris was either magical or overrated, graceful or grubby, full of charm or full of dog droppings. I’d worried about which version we were going to get. What I discovered in that week of ferrying baguettes up in a coffin-sized lift and waving apologetically at the neighbour across the way, was that the city softened once you stopped treating it like a checklist.
Making the effort to say a few words in French, learning which key opened which door, knowing exactly how many steps it was to the bakery. All of that changed the tone of the place. We still did our share of museums, galleries and the big sights, but the memories that have stuck are domestic. The clink of bottles in the supermarket, the pattern of tiles in the stairwell, late glow and the murmur of French conversations from the apartments over the road. That trip convinced me that you haven’t really visited a city until you can get where you’re going without reading a map or navigating with your phone. Paris didn’t become simpler in a week, but from that little apartment in the Marais it shifted from somewhere we’d come to see into some where we could imagine living at least for a while.
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