The first time I saw Nadia, she was wearing green Chucks and a scowl. I ordered a jus de fruit mangue and settled for strawberry. She was out of mango. I handed her two coins totaling three euros because I didn’t have 2,50€ in exact change. Looking me straight in the eye and without any expression, she handed me a small bottle of fruit juice, a cup, and no change. Okay, I thought, so that’s how this works.

Nadia’s tiny outdoor place—I can hardly call it a café—became a stop on my daily morning walk and I became a regular. And though the two—Nadia and my walk—became intertwined, that’s not how this story begins.

Author’s note: Newsletters, which subscribers receive, don’t often make an appearance on the blog. They are different. But I’ve posted the current newsletter here because of the sweet special offer that runs through the month of July.

Foncez! Hurry!

Sunday nights in Paris are like the aftermath of a party. A pervasive quiet settles over the city that persists through Mondays, the calm broken only by the grind of garbage trucks picking up the weekend’s detritus. It’s my favorite 24 hours of the week: there’s an intimacy so palpable I can feel Paris breathe.

For me, a Sunday night stroll is easier than wandering the streets in the early morning. I’m a night owl. But one recent Monday after a restless night,

Stephen Sondheim, the American composer and lyricist, died recently. From “Company” to “West Side Story,” he was a potent force in American musical theater in the latter half of the twentieth century. Of the many accolades and remembrances expressed after his death, …

Paris taught me to see, to understand the difference between looking and seeing. Not only did I find my written voice, but I began taking photos, capturing moments I didn’t trust my mind’s eye to remember. And that’s when I discovered that when you take a photo, …

Bonne Fête nationale! Or more familiarly, C’est le quatorze juillet! To the English-speaking world, July 14 is Bastille Day.

In the heart of la Place de la République, atop an enormous monument, stands Marianne. Who is Marianne?

Like the protagonist who dreams of Manderley in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, last night I dreamt I went to Paris again. Snippets of the day scrambled in my subconscious, reshuffled, and distilled into a sort of grotesque whole. It’s not the first time it’s happened. In fact, it happens often. Each time, I wake and am awash in the disquiet of…

I’m not one for lawn signs, but to support my local Alliance Française, I put one up in my front yard. Besides, I like the message. It says, On se quitte parfois pour mieux se retrouver ensuite. It’s a quote from Adolphe d’Houdetot, a nineteenth century French writer who wrote hunting books, and translates to “sometimes we leave to return better afterwards.”

I wasn’t thinking of that line the other day when…

On this day, le quatorze juillet, July 14, the French celebrate la Fête nationale, known in the English-speaking world as Bastille Day. It’s romantic to envision hordes of angry citoyens storming the medieval fortress-turned-political-prison as the event that set things in motion, but the spark that ignited the revolutionary fires happened several weeks earlier. On June 20, 1789…

The other day I cleaned my espresso machine. After that I made compote out of less-than desirable apricots. And after that I swirled some of it in a cup of plain yogurt and ate it. By then it was time for the New York Times daily crossword puzzle, where my skills have soared considerably the past couple of months.

All fine things to do, some of them, like the espresso machine, even necessary. But all of them…

February is my favorite time in Paris. The days stretch longer, the streets are not filled, and it’s often mild with a whiff of spring in the air, on the trees, and in flowerbeds. When I arrived the first of February, it was so warm that people were enjoying ice cream cones in Place des Vosges! By the end of the week, I had discovered…

“We cannot step twice into the same river,” said the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Twenty-five hundred years later those words still ring true. Each time I return to Paris and metaphorically step into the same river, something about it is a little different. No doubt I am a little different.

Sitting in an opera house built in the late 19th century, watching…

The other day I woke with song lyrics on my lips and a melody in my head. “…And I miss my clean white linen and my fancy / French cologne….” Joni Mitchell. I knew why. The night before, I’d put clean white French linens on my bed. And though I do wear French cologne, every single day, … 

I never know how or when inspiration will strike. But strike it does, and I’m eternally grateful. I’ve learned to respect those moments and grab pen and paper. 

This particular moment came on Labor Day. Looking at my calendar, counting the weekends left before leaving for Paris, balancing that against a long list of to-dos, I pushed panic aside. Something else settled in. What washed over me was…

“The pause that refreshes.” Remember that slogan? It was a successful ad campaign for Coke that debuted nearly 100 years ago. I’ve been thinking about the meaning of “pause” during these last languid days of summer because of a book review that came across my desk. As with many things, the review prompted me to think about Paris.

The book is…

It all started, more or less, by my thinking about the romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail and quickly ramped up into something else, a little like…

The crowd lined the quais in silence as daylight turned to dusk and the spire of Notre-Dame de Paris, engulfed in flames, teetered, and fell.

When you spend a lot of time in a place, people want to talk to you about it. Especially when that place is Paris. People want to talk to me about Paris all the time. I fret about being a one-horse show, but then realize that what are many conversations for me, is just one for someone else. And it so happens that often these conversations illuminate…

I’ve been thinking lately about what lies in the miss. The what? It’s an idea that has taken up residence in my head ever since I read about a trip in which all expectations were cast to the wind because… 

I’m in love. With love**. This is a story about a piece of street art. The way it makes my heart sing, the way it makes me smile.

Paris has a lively street art scene. It dates back…

Here we are at the end of summer. A time of year that always stirs me. Maybe that’s the legacy of so many years in academia: I still get a rush from the smell of new, freshly sharpened pencils. 

The French call this…

People often ask what’s my favorite thing to do in Paris. Without hesitating, I always answer: I love to get lost. But what does that mean, actually? There are lots of ways to get lost. You can…

Did you know Paris originally had only 12 arrondissements? Yep. At one time Montmartre, which feels like a village, and the 16ème, as tony as New York’s Upper East Side, were in the sticks! Today there are 20 districts that curl around the Seine like a snail, each with its own mayor and unique personality.

A little background. Paris is my passion. When I’m not in Paris, I love thinking and talking about it. But what I love about Paris may not be what you expect. In fact, when I started Paris Off Script, my husband said, Well, you certainly have something to offer because you have a unique way of seeing the city. That comment, by the way, did not start an argument!