I am in Paris. Please forgive me as I try to put into words how I feel about this place, to which I keep returning. No visit seems long enough. When I am here, I take French lessons three hours a day, five days a week, and still my French never improves—because I go home and refuse to practice. I don’t want to learn French, I want to learn French in Paris.

I can’t imagine living here, because the city doesn’t seem like it could survive becoming ordinary. It would become somewhere else. The inhabitants of Paris are famously ill-mannered, perhaps because they are irritated at being forced to live in a parallel reality alongside the tourists who stream through the city in a constant flow, stunned or disappointed by Paris but locked absolutely outside everyday existence.

The flow of tourists is as much a part of the city as the river Seine. It might be slowed or shifted but not eliminated. Some might say the pandemic broke the flow, if temporarily, but I have evidence to the contrary. We rented an apartment to stay here all of August, from a writer who splits his time between Paris and Los Angeles. The woman who lives above us came to live there by renting the very apartment in which we are staying. She had intended to come for four months, starting in December of 2019 and leaving at the end of March 2020. Voilà la pandémique! She was unable to leave, and the writer who owns the place was forced to remain in Los Angeles. Months later, she had gone from tourist to inhabitant and found an apartment upstairs available to rent. She lives here full-time now, with a stronger claim on the city than the man whose apartment we now stay in.

What is Paris like for her now? There is a certain halo that surrounds any city one visits as a tourist, leaving behind all one’s ordinary troubles at home. Is Paris ordinary now? I believe that magical places exist. And I have seen firsthand that New York has become measurably less magical than it was 25 years ago—all cities are not equal. Some places are, in fact, better.

The enduring magic of Paris may be due to policy efforts to protect its special charm, efforts which other cities in Europe might duplicate but which US cities have long abandoned. There is a wash of homogeneity across the United States that ensures I can visit a Warby Parker in every cute downtown from sea to shining sea but has begun to steadily efface whatever special quality might have set any of those places apart from one another. I think the impulse behind those forces wants to make our cities better—and yet as developers improve, beautify, and invest the cities become inevitably worse. Am I an old man, afraid of change? Perhaps. But if the world around me were gently improving every day, filling with beautiful places and things, I would be the first to announce it to the world.

It is a cliche to say that Paris is beautiful. Why? Because Paris is fucking beautiful. The buildings are beautiful. The metro stations are beautiful. The signs outside the metro stations indicating that they are metro stations are beautiful. The museums are beautiful. The art inside the museums is beautiful. The people are beautiful too. For those who find Parisians unbearable, I assure you I am referring only to the beauty that is skin deep. But I also find the Parisian attitude charming, like a beloved supervillain. I would not say that Paris is definitively the most beautiful city. Certainly Istanbul, Venice, and Valparaíso (Chile, not Indiana) are at least equally remarkable. But Paris has achieved an ideal of beauty by which other cities are measured. No one ever says, “Oh Paris is so beautiful, it looks just like Krakow,” even though Krakow may in fact be the more lovely.

My favorite museum on Earth is here, and though I love their post-Impressionist collection, the building itself is also a work of art. The streets of Paris have modernist architecture, medieval architecture, and street after street of those Victorian apartment buildings with wrought-iron balconies covered in potted plants. I get that people exist who don’t want to sit on the balcony of a Paris apartment as the sun goes down, sipping wine and eating bread and cheese—but I don’t understand those people.

Paris is both enormous and accessible. There is always more to explore, but it always feels walkable. (Or bikable! Due to massive recent investment in this area, Paris has fantastic bike lanes.) It is a city built for people, not cars. New York is the same—and yet the infestation of cars in New York feels overwhelming, while Paris never feels crowded by its automobiles. And unlike New York, the metro comes every 5 minutes even at midnight. Paris feels like it is completely available to you, while at the same time always keeping back something, a surprise to reveal when you least expect it.

There has been much talk recently about the Olympics in Paris, and how locals all fled in fear of the crowds while tourists stayed away. Airlines lost money. Hotels remained empty. And guess what? It was awesome. Because Paris is perfect for the Olympics. It can open up and contain the whole world. Parisians may not be welcoming in the way that the greeter standing at the entrance of Target would be, but maybe part of what makes Paris desirable is that it doesn’t want anything from you.

But have I mentioned nothing of what haunts me most about Paris? Paris could be a pit in the ground, and if the food was this good I would keep coming back. Not just French food: the Chinese food, the Spanish food, the Laotian food, the Jewish deli—all incredible. The cheap food is delicious. The expensive meals are worth it. The vibe is good. The wine is excellent. I’m obsessed with boulangeries, I’m obsessed with chocolateries, I’m obsessed with tagine, confit, and all the cheeses.

As someone who truly travels the world in order to eat delicious meals, I feel the world is already here. There are many cities and countries I have visited to which I would like to return—and yet the only one I keep coming back to for weeks at a time is Paris. I love Detroit, I miss Reykjavik, I fantasize about moving to Marseille, but I’m already trying to figure out the next time I can come back to Paris and what I will eat while I’m here.

Appendix

For those who might be planning a visit to Paris, here are some places I have discovered during my visits:

Eli Rarey World Tour Newsletter

Appendix

Le Chateaubriand

Restaurant Au Passage

Déviant

Boullon Chartier grands boulevards

Bouillon Chartier

Passage Des Panoramas

Boulangerie Utopie

Le Pain Retrouvé

Lao Siam

Chez Paul

Rosa Bonheur Buttes-Chaumont

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