What to do on Sundays in Paris

Sundays in Paris are still considered a day of rest, for religious reasons - that is, the French faith and belief in time off work. But if you live with neighbors in close proximity (and especially if you have parquet floors, like most Parisians) you'd better not spend your day off mowing the lawn, catching up on vacuuming, or installing some new shelves - that is, unless you want your neighbors thumping on the ceiling to subtly and oh-so-passive-aggressively point out that they don't like the noise you're making. (Thanks to Mazarine for that anecdote!) Some Parisians have even been forbidden by their neighbors from running their clothes dryers on Sundays.

You can also scratch off that other UK and US Sunday tradition, of reading a fat newspaper filled with cultural supplements, coupons and cartoons. Most French newspapers are relatively thin, and as I type, they're actually on strike. And if you need to do any shopping, you're not having a lazy sleep in - shops that are open on Sunday usually open in the morning (say, 9-1) rather than the afternoon. Exceptions include areas market 'tourist' - this includes the shopping mall in the basement of the Louvre and the 4 Temps, a big mall at the end of Metro line 1. Food shopping after 1pm is usually limited to gas stations and the corner shops, which are relatively pricey and may not have any fresh bread.

My recommendations instead? Church, of course - in French or in English (St Joseph's RCC, St Michael's Anglican, American Church in Paris, etc). MCM and I usually like to eat - heading to the market in the morning, buying supplies, and then cooking in the afternoon. We also usually try to counter the eating by getting out for a nice walk or a bike ride. You can now rent Velibs near pretty much every Parisian park, including the Bois de Boulogne and Vincennes.

Or, and here's my top suggestion, try one of the markets that are open in the afternoon. I like the covered, open-air book market in the bottom of the 15th arrondissement, which is open every weekend and specialises in used and antiquarian books.



Bring cash. Most books are in French although there are some in English. Some of the vendors are very specialised - like antiquarian books on French colonialism - and some carry jumbled bits of everything (Andrew Morton's biography of Monica Lewinsky, anyone? Or the Hachette Guide des Vins 1987?) There are sections dealing with children's books, cookbooks, fine art books, science fiction, and (gulp) erotic cartoons. If you're just looking for a pocket version of any French literary classic, you'll find it here for a euro.

When you're done, there's a little restaurant across the street, Les Tontons, which specialises in tartares, or there's a Poilane bakery. You can also take a nice walk in the Parc Georges Brassens, a pretty modern park that has lots of play areas for kids.

March on, march on...

I can't believe that it's already March. Today I had a good, full day, and it made me realise how I don't want to leave Paris, as I've only just started to find my way around. By find my way around, I really mean that I am just starting to know Paris the way I know London, where I have a mental map of the metro system, a sixth sense for where and when things are happening, and an instant list of places where I know I can get a good coffee/haircut/clean bathroom facility/winter coat.

Today one of my classes was cancelled and I am proud to say that I actually used my free afternoon on fun and useful work. I taught for four hours, then ate my baguette sandwich in a park near work, then hopped on the metro and tunneled over to the Pont Marie stop. I got out, donned beret and gloves, wished I had brought my sunglasses for the cold winter sun. I crossed the stone bridge over the Seine onto the Ile St Louis, passing creperies, antiques shops, and art galleries, and walked through the 5th arrondissement to a small library I frequent for research. There I spent a few hours quietly reading and researching for Book 2. I took a long way back to the metro, opting to go straight to my metro line rather than change lines, walking through the Jardins du Luxembourg and the laocooning cobbled streets of St Germain.

Small epiphanies: I like Paris more when I am getting writing and research done. And when I am walking a lot - I love to walk. And when it's sunny. Shocker!

***

Here's a little observation that I thought I'd share. Walking home from the metro, on the way to the boulangerie to buy my evening baguette, I passed by one of the many small shops that caters to the region's large North African population. This particular shop combined a halal butcher, a selection of fresh produce and a range of dried goods. This caught my eye near the front door: a display of pre-packaged microwave meals with the descriptions on the yellow cardboard package written in both French and Arabic. That's not strange, except that the meals were hachis parmentier: a French dish kind of like a shepherd's pie, with leftover meat shredded and topped with mashed potato.* So observe the process: France colonises North Africa. France leaves North Africa. North Africans move to France, open shops where they import and sell North African food. Said shop sells traditional French dish, (presumably) produced in North Africa and sent to France to be consumed by North African French. Hmm.

* Parmentier was a French napoleonic general and the term "parmentier" refers to a dish topped with potato and baked. For the record, when I leave this earth and head to the great big Paris in the sky, I could think of no greater honour than to have a potato dish named after me. My real name, of course: Parisian potatoes is not quite distinctive enough.

Agenda

Here's a sneak peak at some of the things happening over the next few days of my life:

- I will pick up my real, beautiful, laminated carte de sejour (residence permit) from the prefecture. This is very exciting. I am hoping it will be a bit quicker than getting the temporary one (6 hours, two of them before sunrise). I am also hoping that I will not have to witness the bizarre and misogynistic behaviour that I observed last time from some of my fellow would-be residents.

- Some of my students have cancelled their classes so I will go finally get to the library to do some research on Book #2.

- Afterwards I will go to a wine tasting. The great news is that I will also get a superb workout in: there is a general transportation strike planned for Thursday, and I plan on doing a lot of walking.

- I will write another job application for a position in the US, and ask deep existential questions about my life, my career, who I want to be, where I want to live, whether I am doing the right thing, if the fact that I enjoy my current part-time job for which I am over-educated is a sign that I am a peace with my ambitions or whether I have simply said a big fat bonjour to la paresse, whether I am really giving Paris enough of a try, whether in fact I am a snob because I would rather live in Paris than Pittsburgh, whether snobbism is inherently incompatible with progressive social justice, whether or not this is a run-on sentence and, if not, whether or not it can be diagrammed, and, most strikingly, whether all this vapid philosophising looks French on me?