Riding in Romania

We cannot travel. But we can read about travel. I wrote this piece, about a week Mum and I spent horse-riding in Romania, in 2017 but never submitted it. The experience was a challenge to capture; it was like riding through a medieval fairy tale, with summer fields and forests that stretched forever through the Carpathians and rural Transylvania, all discovered from the saddle. (All except Bucharest, of course.) Thus, the story is a bit rough around the edges but this seems as good a time as any to share it.

Transylvania without Dracula

Cow slalom was not on the itinerary. Bear-watching, yes. Cantering on horseback through the Carpathian foothills, absolutely. Braving shots of pălincă, the beloved Romanian firewater, well, of course. But skirting free-roaming cattle on the open road, where motor vehicles still share the bitumen with horses and carts, is unexpected.

So is the sight of our guide sprinting up the gravel verge, having cajoled the driver into pulling over so she can film this slice of modern-yet-medieval Central Europe. If the cattle are surprised to see a smartphone-wielding Frenchwoman hot on their heels, they don’t show it, barely breaking stride as they meander home, bells tinkling in the dusk.

The bovine parade is a twice-daily ritual in the Transylvanian highlands. There are almost no fences around the fields. Just infinite open spaces and rolling hills, dense oak, fir and beech forests and crumbling hamlets, fortified Saxon churches and, higher up the imposing mountains, busy ski resorts. “It’s paradise for cows,” says our driver.

This is the Romania we have come to explore in a week-long, well-organised itinerary of horse-riding, history, culture and gourmet food.

Getting started

Bucharest is our point of arrival, but we soon leave the faded, troubled, contradictory beauty of the capital behind to drive three hours north, and what seems like centuries back in time, to Șinca Nouă (its population of 1800 is spread through the surrounding hills). It’s late summer, arching blue skies overhead and bronzed cornfields flanking the road. I’m nervous. Our tour is tailored for experienced riders and I’m hoping my rusty skills will be up to steep climbs and forest gallops. I’m also concerned about my bottom coping with four-hour stints in the saddle. The promise of a horse-free day to visit Sighișoara (birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula) and 12^th-century village Viscri and their UNESCO World Heritage-listed treasures is soothing.

I stop fretting, however, as soon we turn into Equus Silvania, our base for the first four days. The equestrian centre nestles in a river valley, enclosures for pigs, ducks and geese to one side of the driveway, an organic vegetable garden tumbling down the slope behind the three-storey wood-and-brick guesthouse. My nostrils fill with smells of hay, fresh air and horse. We are met by manager Bree, a 26-year-old live wire from, improbably, Port Macquarie. She furnishes us with local sparkling wine, bruschetta of homegrown tomatoes and wild mushrooms, and a rundown of the week.

Our party of three – me, my mum and a friendly English woman called Nicola – have booked through specialist equestrian travel company Cheval & Châteaux. Its founder (the aforementioned French native), Anne-France Launay, fell in love with Romania enough to extend her Loire Valley-based business here in May 2017. We are the first group to experience her Best of Transylvania tour.

Yes, it’s a niche market, but horse-riding, for all its bum-numbing potential, has many advantages as a mode of transport: it’s a good sightseeing speed; mud, streams and fallen logs pose little obstacle; you can see over garden walls and reach up to pluck a perfectly ripe plum from an overhanging bough. It’s also possible to move quietly enough to observe wildlife – these parts are home to brown bears, wolves, lynx, roe deer, eagles and buzzards – or at least spot their evidence.

Bear tracks and meadows

On our first ride, Bree points out fresh bear tracks – with pad and claw marks clearly visible in the smooth clay – and droppings so brilliantly purple with digested berries as to warrant their own Pantone shade.

I soon find myself reaching for words such as glade, dappled, loamy, meadow, mysterious, pristine and ancient to describe this landscape, the southern end of a mountain system that stretches 1500 kilometres in a backwards L shape through Romania up to Poland. At regular points in our rides, the terrain falls away from high ridges in undulations of variegated green as far as the eye can see. As the horses regain their breath after a climb, we lose ours at the sheer lack of humanity. Then, just when we feel alone (bar the odd herd of cattle or sheep), a natural-gas plant or motorcycle tour drops us back into the 21^st century.

In the early evening, after a wander through the five-hectare Equus property, including seeing mares and foals and squeaky pink piglets, we haul ourselves into a wooden cart behind the shiny bay rump of a Romanian carthorse for a mountaintop sundowner. We are told later that the red tassels on his bridle are to ward off evil spirits. At the top of a panting, lurching ride, I thank the driver with my only Romanian phrase, mulțumesc, and he kindly smiles despite my mangled pronunciation.

Late afternoon the following day introduces locals of a different kind. After a gorge hike in Piatra Craiului National Park, we drive into the forest to be met by an escort of two rangers, then continue another 20 minutes on foot into the fairy-tale forest. The terrain rises vertical on either side of the road, and as we cross the plank bridge and climb makeshift steps to the stilted hide, it feels very vulnerable to be human in this wilderness. Three brown bears are already tucking into mounds of muesli and scattered apples in the clearing beyond our viewing window. Over the next two hours, we observe 11 (of a park population of about 40, according to a ranger), from a four-month-old cub that hangs back close to its mother to a 12-year-old male, as well as four jittery foxes and several erratic bats. “That’s your sighting of Dracula,” says our driver.

In the shadow of Dracula

The spectre of Vlad is inescapable, unsurprisingly, haunting fridge magnets, tea towels and T-shirts as well as the history books with his bloodthirsty legend. We skip nearby Bran Castle, which inspired the Dracula myth and by which Vlad passed – burning the city outskirts and massacring Saxons according to our driver – although it’s the country’s most popular tourist attraction. Instead, we head to Sighișoara, Europe’s only inhabited citadel. Hiking up steep cobbled streets, I rue the absence of horse.

In Viscri, about 40 kilometres away, many of the pastel-coloured houses along the gravelled main road bear small blue plaques showing when they were restored. Each seems to have a bench out the front where locals can sit, wait for the cows and watch the tourists go by. It’s the oldest Saxon village in Transylvania. The road is unsealed and leads uphill, past a well whose water is so rich in iron it tastes like blood, to the magnificent UNESCO-listed fortified church. From the tower, the fields stretch in all directions. After lunch, as we drive through farmland, our guide talks about the country’s layered Saxon, Hungarian, German and Turkish history, glancing through the brutal privations of life under Ceausescu to the modern independent nation.

Just as Equus Silvania is starting to feel like home – albeit one with porcine squabbles piercing the early hours – we transfer to Foundation Conservation Carpathia’s 500-hectare farm and biodiversity project in the tiny Saxon village of Cobor. Our ride to the property starts amid farmland, near Halmeag village, to cut the 50-kilometre journey to a manageable four hours. My mount, Asaad, a compact purebred Arabian, whose nickname of “The Professor” is due to his mature years, is a measured firecracker with a swinging, willing walk and the impressive fitness to handle extended canters along broad ridges and up forested trails.

We trek mostly in single file. Our pace is faster than many guided rides, with smart trots and, at Bree’s twirling hand signal, long canters. “A bit faster?” she calls at the beginning of an inviting stretch, and Asaad changes gears beneath me as I relax my grip on the reins and nudge his sides, his neck and stride lengthening into a gallop. I lean forward, weight balanced over his shoulders, and watch the trail unfold between his pricked grey ears. My nerves have vanished in a rush of exhilaration. This is freedom, the beat of hooves in my ears, sunshine on my back. Paradise, even.

Photo: Cheval et Châteaux

Social meditation

Most days, I have pigeons on my windowsill. I’m not sure what they think of the scenes they see when they look into my kitchen. I have an arched window, a bit like the one on Play School, on the top floor of a converted Victorian terrace, and there’s a wide ledge outside. It’s a perfect perch is every respect.

This morning, an inquisitive pigeon with nothing better to do would have seen a woman staring intently at a screen wearing a puffin hat. The other day, that same woman was dancing about wildly to tinny sounds emanating from decades past via a laptop that she had nearly superglued to the kitchen bench the previous night. The pigeon wouldn’t have known that, of course. I can’t imagine how pigeons understand music. Or superglue, for that matter. Cockatoos seem to enjoy getting down to a fat beat if the online videos are to be believed. Pigeons probably have other things to occupy their time.

I’m practising social distancing, like the conscientious Londoner that I am. Yes, I’m a Londoner now – I left Paris last year – although perhaps in these strange times it doesn’t make that much difference. We are all in lockdown, whether you’re in Paris, Madrid, Milan or Manchester. I’m in north London.

I envy the birds their freedom. I hope they’re enjoying cleaner air up there above the city’s parks and rooftops. The buses are still circulating, mostly empty, and the traffic is reduced. I’m heartened by how much less CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere.

It seems an opportune time to restart this dormant blog. Many of my usual activities are unchanged, my perspective is evolving; it’s helpful to focus on the present and be glad of natural light, central heating and a decent stash of toilet paper. Writing helps with gratitude, and somehow it slows time, much like meditation, when you think about the progression of a thought, word by word.

I’m running, writing, dancing – just in a much-restricted landscape. I’ve taken up Pilates to fix a long-standing back issue, as well as the knee and hip pain that were my come-uppance for ignoring the root back problem for too long. Turns out stretching is useful, and might have saved me from months of recuperation. Regardless, I am where I am, and able to do sit-ups for the first time in my life. I’m practising gratitude. I know I’ve said that, but it bears repeating. I’m grateful for friends and family both nearby and at the end of various bits of technology. I’m grateful to anyone who has read this far.

So, what is London like at the moment? I can only give the view through my tiny lens. It’s subdued. It’s also gloriously sunny, with clear blue skies and a gentle breeze shaking the tender leaves. The magnolias and daffodils are out. The mornings are sunlit. I’m lucky to get both morning and afternoon sunshine in my flat. The sirens seem louder but perhaps that’s just anxious vigilance in action.

In the park, early in the morning, a steady stream of joggers cross to the other side of paths to avoid close contact with each other. This is new. They weren’t bothering so much with that until Boris Johnson issued the government’s stricter guidelines last night. Some people smile. We navigate each other with friendly suspicion. I say hello to people’s dogs and stop to take photos of the light.

On Sunday, a van was circulating through my neighbourhood, instructing the population to stay indoors in several languages and giving a hotline number. I tried to note it down but kept missing the first couple of digits, so I don’t know who had decided to take community safety into their own hands. It seemed to be effective in chasing a few people back behind doors.

People are still walking in the street, the little local grocers are still open. The supermarket admits only older people and those with mobility issues or other disabilities for the first hour of trading. The rest of us wait outside. I say us because I tried to do a small shop yesterday morning before giving up and taking my custom to the kosher market around the corner. A few of the people coming out of the supermarket, which is a big, variety-type branch with electrical goods and such as well as food and booze, said not to bother, that there was nothing in there. I didn’t hang around to go in, but I definitely saw some things on the shelves, so I suspect “nothing” might have referred to in-demand lines such as pasta, toilet paper, cleaning products, potatoes and onions. But I don’t know. I was able to buy excellent sourdough, made in the East End, from a café yesterday morning.

The guy operating the checkout where I eventually (almost) filled my list told me the corner deli had face masks and deodorant (very important), so I went next door and got both. The service was calm and friendly. You could be forgiven for thinking nothing whatsoever untoward was going on. Except that people kept coming into the deli to buy face masks.

I know about as much about what’s going on in the rest of London as anyone reading The Guardian or following the BBC online. At this time, flight would be a useful skill. Imagine what you’d learn gazing into people’s windows.

 

Espresso on every corner

Coffee can be a reason to cross town. Or just leave your apartment. Luckily, the 20th arrondissement is full of places in which to find a decent roast, often with good music, a friendly welcome and wi-fi thrown in. Here, in no particular order, are 15 local favourites and recent discoveries.

Cream A chic niche on multi-culti rue de Belleville, Cream (now closed) upped the local coffee bar when it opened in 2015. The excellent Belleville Brûlerie roast comes in a well-edited range of styles – including a mini-crème-like cortado (3€) for those expanding their coffee vocab – but there’s no decaf, soy or wi-fi. Tempting sandwiches, salads, cookies and cakes hit the spot if you feel like eating. Afterwards, head up the steep hill to Parc de Belleville for one of the best views over Paris. 50 rue de Belleville 

Les Pères Populaires This place, with its fine tunes, mismatched décor and bargain coffee (€1 espresso), is a chilled-out haven near Place de la Nation. It has 5G wi-fi, plenty of space and a laissez-faire attitude towards laptop jockeys who spend hours over a single beverage. If you come for lunch, the €16 set menu is seasonal and satisfying (with moreish Ten Belles bread on the side). With a truly mixed crowd – native millennials, families, welded-on regulars – Pères Pop is also a lively (read noisy) option for apéro. 46 rue de Buzenval

Les Pichettes This homey newcomer does a €10 Sunday brunch, making the most of the market atmosphere and passing foot traffic. It’s mostly a lunch spot, though, open from 11am to 4pm every day but Saturday, with a daily menu (three courses, €15), natural wines and beer from Montreuil brewery La Baleine. Continuous service means you can just pop in for noisette (€1.90) served in a vintage teacup with choc-coated coffee beans on the side. 47 rue des Vignoles


Le Café Sans Nom On Thursday and Sunday mornings, this spacious café (on the corner opposite Les Pichettes) hums to the rhythm of the open-air market in Place de la Réunion. As well as a certain zinc-bar, no-frills charm – and serviceable coffee (€1.30 noisette) – there are books to browse, wi-fi and a genuine neighbourhood vibe to enjoy from a table on the terrace. 57 rue de la Réunion


L’Escargot d’Or They roast the coffee on the spot here. It’s only open in the afternoon (or evening on Friday and Saturday) and closed Sunday. They also have a stand at Marché de Charonne on Friday mornings and sell coffee beans from around the world. 53 rue de Bagnolet

Chouette Well-made espresso and flaky croissant at Chouette (with its double meaning of owl and super) is a good way to start the day, with free wi-fi removing any excuse not to work, if that’s the mission. Locals take equally to the footpath terrace for a sundowner. The menu at lunch and dinner is fresh and inventive and the Art Deco design touches – mirrors, light fittings – make this handsome space a standout at the southern end of the arrondissement. 89 rue des Pyrénées

Le Barbouquin Worth the detour to street-art-filled rue Denoyez, this cute, casual café does double duty as a second-hand bookshop (hence the name). Sip your noisette (€2.40) in a velour-covered armchair or at the long communal table. It has wi-fi but also a weekend laptop ban – to encourage conviviality, as a sign on the door helpfully explains. Its comme-ci, comme-ça attitude to tables filled with laptops bearing glowing fruit is, it seems, increasingly common. 1 rue Denoyez

Café La Laverie It’s a little bit Paris terrace, a little bit rock’n’roll, with fairy lights outside and retro-inspired décor indoors (including the old laundromat sign, evidence of the building’s former life). In the fine weather, enjoy your espresso (€1.90) or panaché (that’s a shandy in Australian parlance) looking out across the shady square. There’s no wi-fi, just conversation, cigarettes and a book (yes, a paper one). Cnr rue Sorbier and rue de Ménilmontant

Benoît Castel – La Pâtisserie-Boulangerie The open-kitchen concept comes to the bakery. At Benoît Castel’s eponymous boulangerie-pâtisserie, you can have excellent coffee (€2.20 noisette), lunch or weekend brunch (€29) with a backdrop of artisan flour, dough hooks and antique wood-fired ovens (logs stacked neatly the side). Long tables, floor-to-ceiling front windows and wi-fi make this a very pleasant working spot. Take home some jam, biscuits or granola as well as irresistible bread and pastries. 150 rue de Ménilmontant

Cerwood Terrasse Just off the main strip at Jourdain, the second Cerwood address (after the original in the 19^th) is more log cabin than typical Parisian café. It’s all antlers, animal hide and hunks of tree suspended from the ceiling, not to mention a leather chesterfield couch by a faux open fire (in an echo of the owners’ pretty-rustic florist shop, Nouvelle Ere, nearby). The coffee is from Brûlerie de Jourdain, there’s free wi-fi and, as per the name, an inviting terrace. 8 rue Jean-Baptiste Dumay

Kahwehgi Coffee House Pull up a stool at the bar in this tiny, friendly café for a macchiato or signature Kahwehgi (an espresso topped with cream), both €2.50, made with coffee from award-winning French roaster Pfaff. A range of teas, sweet nibbles and ground coffee are available to take away. The location is welcoming, too, on a leafy side street between Place Gambetta and Père Lachaise cemetery. 9 avenue du Père Lachaise

Ô Divin Traiteur Mid-morning, just after opening, the glass-and-marble bar at Ô Divin Traiteur is already topped with Middle Eastern-inspired pastries and salads. The whole place smells incredible, and the espresso (€2) is smooth. Linger for lunch or go up the road to sister épicerie and primeur (greengrocers) – both part of the group along with Restaurant Ô Divin in the 19th – for wine, cheese, charcuterie and fresh produce, if you fancy a gourmet picnic at Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. 118 rue de Belleville

Le Monte-en-l’Air 
Hidden away opposite Ménilmontant’s beautiful Notre-Dame-de-la-Croix church, this design-focused bookshop – art, photography, graphic novels and illustration – is not really a café, but it does offer coffee and cold drinks on the terrace. 2 rue de la Mare

Aux Ours Maybe it’s the banks of sidewalk tables, maybe the neighbourhood atmosphere, but this place is always buzzy, often to the point of heaving. It leans more towards bar/restaurant (with a classic French menu and new home-delivery service) than café, but in the morning, it’s a quiet place to work or simply have a coffee (€1.10 espresso). The spacious interior and free wi-fi make it popular with freelancers. 236 rue des Pyrénées

ABC Belleville – Arts of Bakery & Coffee Opposite the forecourt that overlooks Parc de Belleville, ABC puts the city at your feet. Although you might not notice the view (look, the Eiffel Tower!) if you’re here, bleary-eyed, when it opens at 7am. If a croissant and espresso (€1.20) are not sustenance enough, the breakfast offerings extend along a distinctly anglo bent, from granola to omelette, and for those who don’t get going until midday, there’s a lunch menu, too. 10 rue des Envierges

 

 

Promenade de deux

The main hall of 104 Centquatre is a vast space. Concrete floor, skylight open to the cerulean-grey patchwork above, red brick, iron beams. Dancers of a world of styles – hip-hop, tango, salsa – are toiling joyously in the natural light that pours through that transparent roof. It’s hard to believe this building was once home to the city undertaker service, where up to 1400 people organised 150 funerals a day, where first horses then motorised hearses were accommodated on a site the size of Place de la République. The 1873 building has, since its rebirth in 2008, housed rehearsal and performance spaces, a start-up incubator, bookshop, cafés and vintage boutique Emmaüs. It’s a world unto itself – from the Open Wall neon installation by Pascale Marthine Tayou in the arched floor-to-ceiling glass frontage as you enter to the tucked-away Café Caché.

Paris does urban renewal with style, and this is the second example of it on our Saturday afternoon ramble through the 10^th, 18^th and 19^th arrondissements to Aubervilliers, a copy of L’Autre Paris in hand.

When J and I meet at Gare de l’Est at 3pm, we have it firmly in mind that we’ll be finished and settled with beers in hand at Le Supercoin by six at the latest. Not so fast. Turns out perhaps we walk slowly, or take too long over coffee, or there are just too many things to see on Nicolas Le Goff’s second itinerary in the book to rush things.

Our first cool discovery is behind a high wall over the road from the 19^th-century railway station, one of Paris’s six main hubs and the departure point for the first Orient Express to Istanbul (thank you, Wiki, for that titbit). The station façade is gorgeous. But more lovely in its way is the garden of Café A in the Maison de l’Architecture. Too late for lunch, too early for coffee. We snap a couple of pictures, take a look at the menu and promise to return another day.

Right, to serious navigating, wandering, wondering and getting under the skin of a new part of town. (Sorry, 20^th, you’ll have to sit this one out.)

We cross the forecourt of the station, up horseshoe-shaped stairs, over an iron bridge next to an old viaduct, around the corner to find the coloured façade of Collectif 23 is no more. We stand at the gate, making friendly noises to the dog on the other side. Eventually, a nice chap comes to ask if he can help us. I explain we’re doing a tour and hold up the book. He looks puzzled, then amused as he reads the entry that mentions this art collective squat – the mural was painted over, he says – and invites us in to see their latest photography exhibition, of women fighters during the Balkans conflict.

Onwards. Through the Indian quarter, past an incense-scented temple, piles of shoes at the door, to La Halle Pajol, our first repurposed utopia. The former mail exchange depot (built 1926) is now, yes, a cultural centre and 330-bed youth hostel. Its roof also supports Paris’s second largest collection of solar panels. We find a table at Les Petites Gouttes’ leafy terrace and order coffee (for me) and a house-brewed IPA (for J).

Breather over, next stop is the Marché La Chappelle on rue de l’Olive. The covered market, which stays open until 7.30pm most days, has immaculate stands of produce, fish, meat and cheese. I love French markets – rabbits with organs neatly on display, chickens with feet and head intact, pungent cheese, fresh oysters to be devoured standing up. Nearby En Vrac sells wine by volume – you can take your bottle and refill for just 3€.

Due to my inability to navigate and read instructions at the same time we’re halfway across the power-blue bridge over the train tracks before I realize we’ve skipped a garden or two. Regardless, we continue to the Jardins d’Eole, which stretch along the railway with basketball courts, lawns and a lovely view of the Sacré-Coeur off in the distance. It’s a green oasis between transport infrastructure and high-rise apartment developments and very popular, it seems.

Around the corner, through a neighbourhood vide grenier in full swing, we stop to gape at the Orgues de Flandre, a monumental 1970s housing development. From there, it’s five minutes to Centquatre.

Deciding not to have another stop, at Café Caché, we leave arts central and walk along Paris’s longest street art fresco to the new Gare Rosa-Parks. (It links to Saint-Lazare in seven minutes!) The pedestrian/cyclist thoroughfare takes us to Square Claude-Bernard, then over the Périphérique via a curvy wooden bridge, glancing right at the Forêt Linéaire but a bit too weary to explore further.

Our final destination is the canal and the free shuttle ferry from enormous shopping centre Le Millénaire to the Corentin-Cariou métro station, where our “official” itinerary ends. The ferries come every 12 minutes and are a novel way to travel.

So, at nearly 8pm, we finally reach Le Supercoin, a close-to-perfect neighbourhood bar that specializes in craft beer. Oh yes. We get two demis of Rhythm’n’Blues, a smoked rye IPA from local O’Clock Brewing. At 7.5 per cent alcohol, it’s a big beginning but, hey, we’re been walking. And, oh yes, she’s a lovely drop, with clear notes of smoke and pleasing bitterness. We discuss barley wine and the merits of ambrée versus IPA, all the while continuing with a mini degustation (and nibble a complimentary crêpe complète). Our next beers, shared, in bottle not pression, include a coffee number from Brasseurs du Grand Paris that we agree would make a cracking biramisu.

Sweet.

 

 

Urban ramblings

On the other side of the southern wall of Père Lachaise cemetery, Le Jardin Naturel – the natural garden – has been left to self-seed and native species encouraged to proliferate thanks to chemical-free, eco-friendly maintenance. It’s tucked in behind rue de Bagnolet and feels, over its 6300 square metres, more like a walk in the country, with birdsong and sunlight breaking through spring leaves in patches. It’s unusually unkempt for a city park, charming and rambling, with signs offering information about the indigenous plants. Here, an oak, there a field maple, copper birch, bellflowers, ferns and so on in a tapestry of green, and pink, and gold.

I had forgotten the little park was there until yesterday when we came upon it during a “randonnée urbaine” organised by local bookstore Le Merle Moqueur. Our expert guide was Nicolas Le Goff, whose excellent new book, L’Autre Paris,  I’d brought weeks ago during a fact-finding sortie to FNAC. Happily, J and M agreed to come and we joined about 15 others (mostly women, as another walker noted while we were milling about waiting to begin) for the 90-minute walk. We started at Square Edith Piaf and ended with a signing at the bookstore. (When J observed that it was the first time she’d seen the statue of the Little Sparrow, M responded dryly that she was often skirted by locals and their bottles, which we all agreed was somehow appropriate.)

My hope was that Le Goff, whose book details 10 promenades around the greater city with a focus on architecture, urban design, parks, street art, culture and food, would offer some insight into my ’hood. I was not disappointed. It turned out that many of the participants were also locals, and he clearly felt the pressure to give us something special. At one point, as we walked through an innovative social-housing development, Le Goff asked J and me if we had seen it before. Our shaking heads elicited a very pleased, “Yes!”

We began at Campagne à Paris, which is utterly village-like in its spring finery, then tacked south through manicured Square Séverine, along the narrow elevated street that overlooks rue de Bagnolet from which we could see two elegantly curved staircases at the front of houses that once sat amid vineyards. Our path took us through the cemetery at the back of Eglise Saint-Germain de Charonne, and Le Goff allowed a few minutes for us to go inside the medieval church (the first time I’d seen it open) whose interior dimness showed off the brilliant hues of the stained-glass windows.

Crossing rue des Pyrénées, Le Goff, who has previously worked at cultural centre Centquatre and clearly loves his subject, took us through the public housing development around Place Mélina-Mercouri, pointing out energy-saving features (heat-retaining construction materials) and how car-free thoroughfares linked adjacent schools. In this “eco-quartier”, there’s child-friendly, ethical Super Café, gardens and a sense of light and space. The design was created in consultation with the residents, he said.

Cutting through Place de la Réunion, being prepped for the Sunday market, Place Marc Bloch and Jardin Casque d’Or, we emerged at rue des Vignoles, and another corner of the arrondissement that was completely new to me. And this is where having a guide really paid off because we were able to peep behind a private gate into another development, this one all external staircases and green walls. It was so lovely. And utterly hidden from the street.

Next door was the brick-red cobbled courtyard of Flamenco en France, opposite a retro barber shop, and down from tempting bar Café de l’Amitié and organic restaurant La Petite Fabrique (where J and I went last night for delicious homemade quiche, brandade de morue and natural wines).

Our route back to rue de Bagnolet also offered a glimpse at the art deco Eglise Saint-Jean-Bosco de Paris, built in 1937, with its 53-metre clock tower.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Paris rewards curiosity at almost every turn, but it does help to be pointed in the right direction. All around Père Lachaise are little cul-de-sacs. We wound our way up and down several, one through Le Jardin Naturel and another that seemed to be lined with warehouses, where work was going on to re-lay the cobbled surface. I immediately wanted to live there.

Yet another took us past the Cité Aubry community garden, one of 14 in the arrondissement, where weekend gardeners were happy to pause in their work to explain the project to us. (I discovered later from the website that the garden was created nearly three years ago, and there is a long waiting list for plots.) The walls surrounding the garden are covered in beautiful murals, and the garden makes excellent use of wooden palettes for planters, dividers and racks. The most magnificent yellow and red tulips filled one box; strawberry plants donned white flowers in pots by the red-arch entry.

We finished back at the bookstore, which has recently had an update, filling its industrial-style interior with more light and opening up the space. We took the opportunity for a browse, particularly the graphic novel section; J bought a copy of L’Autre Paris and we made plans to do the itineraries (watch this space).

The 20^th can feel like the ultimate urban mash-up, dominated in so many places by nondescript high-ish-rises from decades past. The walk with Le Goff revealed some of the neighbourhood’s hidden greenery and, even better, offered a chance to learn about projects putting heart and soul into the built environment. Yes, another Paris, indeed.

Walk this way

The camellias are in bloom. So too the daffodils and tulips. The trees are full of flowers or sprouting shy signs of green. In Square Édouard-Vaillant, a small park near Place Gambetta, the benches are filled and the playground rings with the squeals of children, their shrill cries of delight carrying on the breeze’s chill edge. At the foot of a statue of Léon Gambetta himself, a carpet of fat pigeons are grazing busily in the sun.

I’m about five minutes into a 2.5-kilometre walking circuit (the first in a series of neighbourhood strolls), which is, under blue skies or grey, interesting for its village-within-a-city, browse-inducing boutiques and typically 20^th vibe.

But I should begin, like a civilised guide, at the beginning: Place Gambetta with its modern jagged glass fountain and imposing town hall (more on that later). It is, as always, a hive of activity – buses, shoppers, flower sellers clutching bunches of yellow daffs, with Père Lachaise adjacent and groovy Belleville up the hill. We’ll return here at the end.

For now, though, let’s walk down rue Belgrand and look right to appreciate the ornate façade of what is these days the MK2 cinema. Built in 1920, originally as a theatre, and restored in 1997, the Gambetta-Palais has a distinguished pedigree; its architect was Henri Sauvage, one of the pioneers of the art deco movement. The original interior is long gone but it retains its awning and decorative frieze.

The aforementioned park, on the opposite side of the street, is a verdant oasis in the Haussmann mold, opened in 1879. The Gambetta statue, which once stood in Jardin des Tuileries and then the Napoleon courtyard in the Louvre, was installed in 1982 to commemorate the centenary of the great politician’s death. (Fun fact: Gambetta – lawyer, statesman, publisher – lost an eye in a childhood accident and that eye is apparently preserved at the museum of Cahors, the town where he was born. His heart is in the Panthéon.) The park also has a couple of playgrounds and a small glasshouse.

On Wednesday and Saturday mornings, the stretch of rue Belgrand beyond Square Édouard-Vaillant (named after one of the founders of French socialism) hosts an open-air market. It’s dominated by fresh produce but also has wine, flowers and other goodies.

Another block along is the frankly a little down-at-heel Place Édith-Piaf, where the Little Sparrow (or the brat of Ménilmontant), immortalised in bronze by French sculptor Lisbeth Delisle, reaches for the sky. The singer was born in the 20^th and is buried in Père Lachaise.

The slope of rue de Capitaine Ferber is gentle. I can never resist popping into Le Village (2 rue Etienne Marley) to see what jewellery, homewares and trinkets they have, especially at sales time in January and June.

On the other side of Place Octave Chanute, up a photogenic stairway, is one of the arrondissment’s – and indeed the city’s – hidden treasures: Campagne à Paris. This early-20^th-century housing co-operative of about 90 one- and two-storey townhouses (over principally rues Paul Strauss, Jules Siegfried and Irénée Blanc) is a world away from the high-rise hodge-podge of today’s cité developments. Its cobbled streets, manicured gardens and climbing ivy feel part of another time. When the project was inaugurated in 1926, houses cost about €37,000; today, according to a quick Google search of estate agent sites, those picturesque workers’ houses change hands for about €750,000.

Leaving the urban bucolic behind, at the top of rue Irénée Blanc, turn left, then veer left again into rue du Lieutenant Chauré past the impressive L’église du Coeur-Eucharistique-de Jésus, constructed in 1938.

From there, we weave our way through streets with the typically 20^th mix of architectural styles. The arrondissement only joined Paris proper in 1859, so it can feel part provincial, part city. An upward glance is usually met with a mix of roofs and materials that is at odds with ideas of uniform Parisian stone façades.

At local pitstop Le Quinze, go left into rue du Surmelin. We’ll hold off on coffee for now in order to visit Maison Bohème (at No.15), a pocket of all things craft and hand-made. When I was there on Saturday, the owner Cécile kindly interrupted her radio interview (discussing knitting workshops) to help me and introduce her beautiful store. I bought iron-on patches and a card.

Over the road is Goldy Mama (who are relocating their vintage/retro boutique to rue Orfila around the corner) and Au Chat Qui Pêche (No.12), a true local bistro that I haven’t yet tried but whose classic menu, including a bargain €12.50 formule, scores excellent online reviews. Personally, I love the little sign with its black cat and cute feline postcards in the window.

At the intersection, check out the art deco Pelleport metro station (built in 1921 and dwarfed by the super-modern extension to Tenon Hospital behind it). You can take a detour to Julien Davin (129 avenue Gambetta) – I bought duck breast but they also have horse steak. Horse butchers (chevaline) are less and less common in Paris – usually recognisable from equine features above the awning.

I grabbed a coffee (un café noisette – espresso with a stain of milk) on the terrace at Les Tontons Flambeurs (127 avenue Gambetta). Again, I’ve not eaten there but the plates coming out looked generous and fresh and online reviews are positive.

The wide avenue Gambetta, put through in 1883, is an easy stroll. At the corner of rue de la Chine (95 avenue Gambetta) is an art nouveau landmark apartment building, with ornate bay windows and ironwork. A few steps up rue de la Chine is Iris Absinthe, the leather workshop and store of Picardie native Candice Caulle. She has just reopened after a three-month break and her bags, purses, belts and keychains are rather lovely (as is her enormous snowy dog who greeted me with tail wags when I walked in).

So, back down the hill to Place Gambetta. The town hall has recently been cleaned back to its creamy 19^th-century glory, and its patrician officialdom dominates the square. According to the council website, the building took 10 years to build, and was finished in 1897. The salon des fêtes is 400 square metres replete with chandeliers, but on Saturday I found my way (after being scanned at the entrance as is the case with all public buildings in post-attack Paris) to the salon d’honneur and its current exhibition of war photography by Syrian activist and AFP reporter Zakaria Abdelkafi. The images, taken in Aleppo between 2013 and 2015, contain blood and destruction, snow, kids playing in a burnt-out car and, in one extraordinary picture, three upended buses blocking a street.

It was blunt contrast to my historic, quotidian wanderings, but also, in a way, it being there is emblematic of the quartier. Any itinerary, random or planned, is as likely to deliver an eye-opener as an expected history lesson or simply a way to get from A to B.

Now, to pop around the corner to Maison Landemaine to pick up bread…

 

 

Slice of life

Making a reservation was a necessity. Reserving early was a stroke of genius. When J and I pushed open the door at Le Popine (aka pizza nirvana), the place was deserted and we had our choice of position – window-side table, shared bench or high table with a clear view of the bar and pervy perspective through the pass into the kitchen. We took a place up the back, pushing aside throw cushions to pile up coats and scarves on the banquette.

The menu (delivered swiftly with a branded carafe of Paris’s finest tap) proved a challenge. As J said, why have a gourmet section when the classique pizzas are all artisan prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella? We ordered a 500ml pichet of Chevry and a carciofina (ham, mozzarella and artichoke) for me and something similar (the name escapes me) with added olives and marinated capsicum for J. The tapas, burger and charcuterie were tempting, too, but somewhat tangential to our mission.

I had seen it claimed that Paris’s best pizza came out of wood-fired ovens in the 20th, and so my friends and I have been roadtesting the contenders. Happily, it’s an ongoing quest…

Popine, recommended vigorously by both Le Fooding and Time Out, was second on the must-visit list. First glance, and eager first bite, confirmed the advance notices. The crust was damn near perfect – salty, light, just the right amount of blister and crunch without being dry or brittle, wheaty from artisanal flour in the best possible way – with sparing toppings of quality and flavour. When we finally lifted our heads from flat, round Neapolitan heaven, we realized the room was now packed and buzzing, with a typical Ménilmontant crowd, which is to say young and fashionable.

The crowd at the pizzeria at Mama Shelter is rolled from similar dough. I’ve been a few times, because it’s reliably good and there is usually a spot at one of the two long, skinny tables in the underlit but welcoming space. You enter through the lobby of the hotel, peruse the gift suggestions in the glass cabinets and turn left. (My goal this summer is to be organized enough to make the reservation that will allow me to turn right and step into the elevator up to the popular roof terrace.) There’s a restaurant, too, but usually it’s pizza and a carafe of house red calling my name. No need to be fancy. Mama Shelter is an international chain of affordable, photogenic boutique hotels, styled by French interior designer Philippe Starck. I’m happy they decided to put the Paris one in my neighbourhood.

The service, on this visit as on previous ones, was quick and friendly. C and I clambered onto chunky high stools – I may have crawled under the table to avoid going all the way to the end and squeezing past half-a-dozen fellow diners (Pardon! Excusez-moi! Désolée!) – and ordered a vegetarian for her, Bellota for me. It’s still weird to get a pizza not neatly cleaved into eight, but, hey, if I have to navigate chorizo, tomato, mozzarella and oregano with a knife and fork, so be it. The menu has 10 options and you can add extra toppings. But why mess with something “created with the complicity of three-starred chef Guy Savoy”? The ambient buzz was as noisy as the décor is groovy, and we decided not to stick around for dessert. The helpful waiter packed the leftover pizza into a takeaway box and we headed out, the beginnings of a long night cranking up behind us.

And so, to number three. On a recent Friday, noting with pleasure the lengthening evening (roll on, spring), I installed myself on the closed-in terrace at Tripletta on boulevard de Belleville, ordered a glass of Côtes de Roussillon red and settled in with my university copy of Le Grand Meaulnes to wait for J and M. This restaurant strip, which runs all the way from Père Lachaise cemetary to vintage brasserie La Vielleuse, hosts such a parade of diners, hangers-out, soldiers on patrol, hustlers, pavement smokers, locals with shopping caddies, it feels like the whole eastern city walks past your table, if only you sit long enough.

Tripletta is the compact sister address of bar-bistro Les Triplettes up the road, similarly casual, a bit grittier around the edges, perhaps; there is a constant stream of delivery guys collecting flat boxes for home delivery from the little window on the corner. It’s the kind of place you need for an end-of-week debrief. So it took us a while to get to consulting the menu – and decide on a Napoli (creamy mozza fior di latte, anchovies and black Caiazzan olives) for me and a prosciutto e funghi for J. M was avoiding grains and inducing order envy with a ricotta salad, beefed up with roast vegetables and served in a strangely heavy bowl (“so you think it is more substantial than lettuce leaves,” she said).

All present, correct and satisfying – snaps for the doorstop chunks of good bread (duly lifted and wrapped carefully in napkins for my breakfast) – from beginning until week’s-end fatigue got the better of us.

At Popine, they beat us to it, gently enquiring how long we planned to linger after the last crumbs and swish of wine had been downed. They needed the table. We obliged, of course, rugging up and stepping into that wonderful hum and movement of cars, bodies and possibilities of the boulevard.

Listening exercises

Like a football final, or the human brain, Paris is a city of two halves. It splits many times over, with yawning chasms appearing and closing the longer an interloper lives here, gape-mouthed and intent on prising apart the pieces to peer inside. Left bank, right bank. Parti Socialiste, Les Républicains. Working-class east, bourgeois west. CDI, everyone else. Car, Métro. Native Parisian, everyone else. Tourist, implant.

I returned recently to this last division, as deep and invisible as a puncture wound, as I was flicking through an Australian travel magazine, the beautiful images and text somewhat at odds with the city I live in. This is standard – no one sees their daily surrounds as a visitor does. The short-term stay is stuffed with cherry-picked pleasures and skimmed of the grind. Residents, on the other hand, balance the trials of overpopulation and insouciant competition with the luxury of time and repetition, the opportunity to sit in a bar or café, as I love to do, and watch the world pull up a chair, drink, sigh, and contribute to the landscape. It’s instructive to do this in different neighbourhoods, either by design (as at Les Pères Populaires, above) or hazard, to learn, as the French say, comme une petite souris. Here, then, are some recent observations.

Septime La Cave

The American holding court at the bar is complaining that a man he’d just met tried to kiss him on the lips. I have been listening to him spout foodie jargon for a glass and a half of Busser Printemps (100% malbec) – Michelin stars, five hundred euros, Barcelona, blah, blah, blah.

“He’s got a beard and shit, right? He’s a good guy.” “That’s rad.”

Septime La Cave is full to elegant sufficiency on this early evening. I have a stool, a second glass of wine and half my olives (the black ones – the green ones were so plump and unctuous I ate them immediately). I have my book (La Vérité sur l’Affaire de Harry Quebert by Joël Dicker), a loan from an astute colleague and thus far a compelling mix of Twin Peaks and Lolita.

Rue de Charonne is my terroir. J and I ended up here a few nights ago after finding the gloriously named Bears & Raccoons, around the corner, closed. I’m back because I had, on my way home tonight, a hankering for a good red.

The young women behind the bar, then and now, are attentive and discreet. They bring me a top up based on a raised eyebrow. They slice dried duck breast for bar snacks. They have long dark hair and just-red lips.

Everyone, or nearly, is speaking English. An older dude lingers outside. People leave the bar. They light cigarettes as they go.

I sit and listen. Talking, garden-variety reggae on the stereo, chairs scraping on the wood floor, fridge door closing, ring tones, clinking glassware, traffic, a thump of a handbag hitting the floor.

I’m warm – wine? Candles?

The patrons are well-groomed, beautiful. They swirl their glasses. The two girls near me are comparing text messages and finishing a bottle of Faugères, their glasses leaving glistening scarlet rings on the windowsill.

This feels like Twilight Zone Paris, partly fed by tourists, partly locals of a certain flavour.

The American is back to opining about the wine industry. “Less work, same money.” Maybe he’s somebody. I have no idea. I turn to put a face to the nasal twang. “We have micro-climate. Over the winter, I’m going to try to build a small greenhouse.” His companion is sitting up very straight, listening. She has glossy hair halfway down her back.

The bar is tiny, smaller than my apartment, with cabinets along two walls filled with wine, price tags hung on red thread around each neck. I notice later a bike helmet and umbrella on the coat rack. The furniture is stools, wine crates, an armchair.

“Forty covers a night, so there are some options.”

The song changes, the conversation pauses, then all begins again.

I think the girls next to me are on a date – folded arms, a hand on a hand, a quick kiss. I can’t follow their rapid-fire French mixed with laughter.

The American has gone. Suddenly, the space opens up. I dig into a final olive. The salt reminds me of my hunger. My glass is lined with a shadow of pink, my head has a shadow of alcohol, another twilight zone. I’ve reached page 269 in my book. It’s time to head home for dinner.

It’s definitely a date going on behind me.

Hoppy Corner

Because I am a beer-nerd-in-training, the second thing I notice on entering Hoppy Corner – after realising none of my workmates are here – is that there are fifteen beers on tap, including a couple of familiar Frenchies.

Wrong day, wrong place, wrong time, whatever. My curiosity has been piqued by La Levalloise from Les Brasseurs du Grand Paris on the list, so I pull up the lone stool at the end of the bar.

“Accidental beer is the best kind,” says J in a text. She also says she can’t come down to keep me company. Tant pis. She’s right, though, I think, with an eye on the mid-gold pale ale now placed in front of me. The atmosphere is more wine bar, Americana-style soundtrack not withstanding, than beer hall, and the beer is served in stemware.

Outside, people in Halloween costumes are headed towards the Montorgueil pedestrian area and perhaps to Beaubourg beyond. This Monday night has caught a little imported holiday spirit.

At Hoppy, you can taste before you buy to make sure the bitterness, weight and style of your chosen drop please your palate. The barman launches into the origins of India pale ale between pulling half pints for punters. I feel quietly superior that I already know this story. I study the foam on top of my demi and continue eavesdropping. I think of my sister-in-law, who inadvertently opened the door to the beer universe when she offered me a sip of her Leffe at a café just down the road.

This place has been open since April, the barman explains. They have a rotating selection of thirty beers by the bottle as well as those on tap. There is wine, too.

The noise level is rising. I’m enjoying the crisp, non-challenging bitterness of my choice.

Les Chaises

You’ve got to love a bar that plays Giorgio Moroder. I Feel Love is on, and about five people are sitting at the bar at Les Chaises, while the barman takes the occasional forkful of some kind of meatball dish. I look past him to the short blackboard menu and order a glass of Libac (€4). I take a table at the back, through the wide arch where the wall has clearly been knocked out to extend the space towards the kitchen. I’m meeting J in half an hour, and this place is local, plus it’s a recent recipient of a Time Out award for favourite neighbourhood bar (20^th arrondissement).

Conversation is the dominant sound – about four tables are already filled and a couple more are ready for reservations. I discover this when I try to move to a spot away from the pass. Opposite me, a couple are sharing a planche of cheese and charcuterie beneath a tableau of Scrabble tiles on the wall. Its lines spell out names.

I have previously thought that if you were trying to name a baby or a pet, a visit to an art gallery might furnish many ideas – I was at the Louvre at the time and falling in love with David’s depiction of the Sabine women – but this artwork could also do the job. Magalie? Sébastien? Astrid? Cédric? In the centre, it says, “Merci à tous”, so these names are clearly attached to people, actual people, like the ones coming in now for their reservation and engaged in the critical ritual of kissing everyone, noisily, on both cheeks. (An aside, when I was waiting for my dance class to start the other night, the women doing the concurrent contemporary class arrived to change in the curtained-off corner at the bottom of the stairs where I was sitting, buried in The Line of Beauty. From behind the khaki drapes came a clicking puckering, the smacks of lip-cheek connections, like rain falling heavily on a pond or carp surfacing in a château moat.)

But I digress.

The tables at Les Chaises are mismatched. The chairs, too. The place is named for its seating but it’s standard-issue bric-a-brac here. Industrial lights. A corkboard for announcements made of corks. The walls are red and grey. There are fairy lights and plants.

I continue to watch the couple opposite. The man is eating from their planche with a knife and fork, but in between bites he lets his hand, still holding the fork, fall below the table. I think she likes him more than he does her. Her legs are stretched well into his side of the table. She is not eating.

Mythical city

Photo: Romantique & Rebel

Just as no one wants to meet their hero and discover a real human being, no one wants to move to a fantasy for fear of finding just another city.

Paris is not perfect, obviously. It’s not a postcard. It’s not even, really, a fair representation of its own mythology, for all the beauty of the Ile de la Cité and those Haussmann boulevards. (Catch the RER to the north-eastern suburbs, for example, and see how much égalité you find.)

So, in the spirit of killing idols, and conceding to a format that is drowning magazine journalism, here are four Paris clichés that are about as accurate as, well, those images of accordions, berets and daily croissant intake.

Myth 1. Parisians are fashion-forward.

In Paris, the uniform reigns supreme. This is true for the city’s immaculate firemen and gendarmes but also for the general population. Quirky is the stuff of movies or for les anglais. The out-there dressers you see photographed “on the street” during fashion week are usually bloggers from Tokyo or Brooklyn or London snapping selfies outside the Grand Palais or in the Haute-Marais. Parisians themselves are more about calibrated understatement. One trend per season is quite enough, merci beaucoup. Last winter, it was oversized, horse-blanket scarves that swamped the wearer from shoulders to nose. Often with just eyes and a tuft of perfectly tousled hair sticking out the top. This autumn, the cropped jacket persists, be it a leather perfecto (so 2015) or collarless brocade number. (Actually, collars seem to have been done away with altogether by the unspoken consensus that governs French wardrobe choices.) That said, a lack of slavery to trends should never be confused with a deficiency of style. Recently, I saw a fifty-something woman in full ladies-who-lunch finery, including strappy stilettos, cycling through the eighth arrondissement. Despite the narrow intersection, she conceded neither speed nor poise to the traffic and pedestrian chaos around her. Classe, as they say around here.

Myth 2. Parisians don’t snack.

Even the most perfunctory nose about a Carrefour or Monoprix supermarket shows this statement up as fallacy. Aisles and aisles of baked goods – from mini waffles to cheese straws – scream, “Eat me outside of mealtimes”, to say nothing of chocolate, chips and charcuterie offerings, in irresistible bite-size portions. Barely a baguette makes it home without the end being nibbled to oblivion. The biscuit brand Lu is this year celebrating 170 years of offering sweet sustenance for transport riding and street strolling. Every Metro station has its vending machines. The much-loved apèro is surely just a culturally sanctioned pre-dinner taster of pretzels, peanuts or popcorn. How is it, then, that France is ranked not first but 65th on the WHO’s list of national obesity rates? Well, a few possibilities spring to mind: portion control, walking and stair-climbing as facts of life, and smoking (the national rate is 28 per cent, compared to 16 in Australia). In this way, they have their venoisserie and eat it, too.

Myth 3. Parisians are rude.

Paris suffers from big-city indifference, crowding and time poverty. No one smiles in the street. I used to find this off-putting; now I consider it efficient use of facial muscles. But are Parisians rude? I have taught English to hundreds of people here, of all ages, from school students to retirees, from all walks of life, from the city and deepest provinces, and found the overwhelming majority to be polite and charming. However, the dismissive stereotype does have some foundation (see previous blog entry Politics of Polite) in that ignorance of French etiquette will often be greeted with cool disdain. The thaw begins with the introduction, be that a formal presentation in the workplace or a breezy bonjour as you enter a boutique. Personal connection is the social lubricant, and this means face-to-face exchange, not just an email. To add further nuance, as a friend explained, les Parigots are difficult to get to know – yes, they’re polite but not always especially warm, and unlikely to extend the hand of friendship easily.

Myth 4. All the bread is delicious.

The scent of Paris is neither Chanel No. 5 nor smoke from discarded Gauloises butts, it’s bread fresh from the oven. Sadly, though, not all baguettes are lovingly crafted with organic floor and natural cultures. Many are baked from frozen dough shipped from the back of beyond. Vigilance pays off, and it’s worth scoping out any neighbourhood in which you find yourself for more than a day for its best boulangerie. My newest discovery is Le Bricheton, an artisan addition to the 20^th with Instagram-worthy miche, spelt and multigrain numbers, and enormous loaves weighing several kilos that you buy by weight. Crisp of crust and dense of crumb, their bread is everything you want it to be. It’s probably just as well (in the interest of maintaining Parisian portion control) that they’re only open in the late afternoon and they don’t bake baguettes. For those, there’s Philippe Bognor, near Gambetta. (The winner of this year’s best baguette competition was La Parisienne in Saint-Germain, by the way.) Food blogger David Lebovitz offers some tips for bread hunting: look for an “artisan boulanger” sign and the name of the baker on the awning, hand-made loaves will be irregular, and choose une baguette tradition because that’s where the love usually goes in making the bread.

Some things are true, of course. The city is beautiful in spring, many a local rocks a striped marinière T-shirt, and in mid-summer, vacated by its citizens (they’re all on holiday), Paris has a breezy nonchalance of vacation that is hard to resist.

 

Amber days

August – hot, quiet, and weirdly chilled – is a good time to check out a new bar or two, particularly hipster-type establishments that are less busy because all the locals are on holiday.

Le Perchoir is not in the 20^th but bills itself as being in Ménilmontant, so for my purposes it counts as local. Arriving before my friend gave me a chance to linger outside the door – nondescript and unmarked but nevertheless unmistakeable due to the velvet rope and doorman glued to his mobile phone – and watch fashionably clad young people and rusted-on residents meander up and down the street. The air was so still it barely moved the lonely lavender in a window box high above the pavement, and even the pigeons couldn’t be bothered to fly. Fragments of sport on the radio, Middle Eastern music and cigarette smoke wafted by. I gather there’s usually a long line for this place, due to its frequent presence on “best rooftop bars in Paris” lists, but at five on a public holiday Sunday night, I was alone. My friend texted to tell me that she was already seated and halfway through her first beer, so with a cool “bonsoir” to the bouncer, I headed in and up to the seventh floor.

Paris was a relative latecomer to the whole rooftop terrace idea, which is odd given how picturesque the roofs are here, and such places are still a novelty. The rooftop at Le Perchoir is kind of beach shack meets warehouse, with raw wood furniture, palm trees and people wearing hats, and could probably be anywhere from Melbourne to Brooklyn. But then it has Paris, including views to the Sacré Coeur, spread out all around.

Now, I’m not usually a beer drinker, but the sun was shining, and it seemed like a good time to start exploring French brewing. At the kabana-style bar, I ordered a couple of Jenlain pale ales (a steep but unsurprising €6 for a half-pint). My learned companion, J, described our choice as full-bodied. “Like a mid-career Catherine Deneuve?” I asked. I found it tasty and rather moreish and began to look forward to discovering a whole new alcohol category.

To a soundtrack of 1940s swing and beard scratching, we discussed French cinema and the virus of mid-century modern that has afflicted interior designers and home magazines since the late nineties. J pointed out that beyond the window on the other side of our blonde-wood bench was the loo and that a person sitting on it could see us through the one-way glass. I pretended to take a photo. Then we decided that, lovely as it was basking in the sun comparing tans, we needed to find somewhere with cheaper drinks.

We descended via the galvanised-iron spiral staircase to check out the very fetching bare light bulbs suspended from the top floor. I hate heights.

The street was still quiet. We turned right, up the hill, over Boulevard de Ménilmontant into the 20^th proper and up to a groovy corner that contains gems such as rock bar La Féline, the studio-apartment-sized restaurant Chatomat and our next destination, Les Trois 8, specialists in artisan beer and organic wine.

Behind the bar, the blackboard listed all the beers on tap, and lacking any other customers to serve, the barman happily explained each one. We chose a bière de garde made by Thiriez brasserie in northern France using only French ingredients, and learnt that this type of brew is designed to age, like wine, developing different characters with time. A bit like people when they drink beer. Compared to our last demi, this one was hoppier, heavier, darker and more bitter. “I’m thinking Isabelle Huppert,” said J.

We settled onto our barstools, flicked through the jar of badges for sale, read all the business cards and postcards on the rack and tried to identify the bar’s trademark symbol – a flame, an artichoke? “Ah, it’s hops,” I said finally. The bar itself has the dimensions of a cupboard, and the lived-in vibe of a student house. We felt very at home.

Next on our ad-hoc dégustation, the barman suggested a double IPA called Nice to Meet You from French-American duo Les Brasseurs de Grand Paris, which clocked in at an impressive 8.5% alcohol. “That’s the thing with craft beer,” said J, diving in enthusiastically. Despite its pronounced floral flavours, this one was as bitter as Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012 with all the attendant complexity.

The last light of the day, and our good sense, was slipping from our grasp, so we scanned the list to select one for the road. Nos Illustres Rituels came served in a stemmed glass shaped like an opium poppy. Its chocolate notes went very well with the squares of rich cake the barman had laid down in front of us. I tapped my foot to the ska on the sound system. Our barman by now had other patrons to take care of, but still found time to tell us that the imperial stout came from the Ouroboros brasserie in the Auvergne region and was, at 9.9% alcohol, dangerously easy to drink. “Smooth and sweet and perfect late at night,” said J. “Almost like a cocktail.”

It was one of those evenings that seem to portend the beginning of something: a new hangout, a new beer buddy, new ease with shooting the breeze in French, new horizons in this fabulous city. And still with two weeks of August to go.