James OReilly - Travelers Tales Paris: True Stories

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR TRAVELERS TALES PARIS

To experience Paris is to smell it, taste it, hear it and, most important, to feel it. Travelers Tales Paris is a guidebook for the senses the real Paris experience.

Mark Eversman, Paris Notes

The book is a must for all those who relish the delights of new discoveries, those who enjoy getting lost, those who marvel at each encounter as it arises, those whose ultimate test of good-value travel is not in how much they spend but in how much they experience and savor.

International Travel News

The newest installment of this now well-known collection is probably the most enchanting.

France Today

...Paris by the Travelers Tales bunch...is a whole bouquet of stories in, about, and encompassing Paris and environs. My own favorite is about a Versailles alternative but there are great excursions toward food, fashion, and folly as well.

Marilis Hornidge, The Courier-Gazette

This latest addition...proves that these are books you can count on; the editors of this series gather together some of the wiliest writers today, many of whom make their rather dubious livings on the road. The tales are current, accessible, often funny, infinitely digestible and not just peripherally about place. Destination aside, the writing in this book makes it an excellent value.

Linda Watanabe McFerrin, San Francisco Examiner

TRAVELERS TALES BOOKS

Country and Regional Guides

America, Australia, Brazil, Central America, Cuba, France, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nepal, Spain, Thailand, Tibet, Turkey; American Southwest, Grand Canyon, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Paris, San Francisco, Tuscany

Womens Travel

Her Fork in the Road, A Womans Path, A Womans Passion for Travel, A Womans World, Women in the Wild, A Mothers World, Safety and Security for Women Who Travel, Gutsy Women, Gutsy Mamas

Body & Soul

The Spiritual Gifts of Travel, The Road Within, Love & Romance, Food, The Fearless Diner, The Adventure of Food, The Ultimate Journey, Pilgrimage

Special Interest

Not So Funny When It Happened, The Gift of Rivers, Shitting Pretty, Testosterone Planet, Danger!, The Fearless Shopper, The Penny Pinchers Passport to Luxury Travel, The Gift of Birds, Family Travel, A Dogs World, Theres No Toilet Paper on the Road Less Traveled, The Gift of Travel, 365 Travel, Adventures in Wine

Footsteps

Kite Strings of the Southern Cross, The Sword of Heaven, Storm, Take Me With You, Last Trout in Venice, The Way of the Wanderer, One Year Off, The Fire Never Dies

Classics

The Royal Road to Romance, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, The Rivers Ran East, Coast to Coast, Trader Horn

TRUE STORIES

Copyright 2002, 1997 Travelers Tales, Inc. All rights reserved.

Travelers Tales and Travelers Tales Guides are trademarks of Travelers Tales, Inc.

Credits and copyright notices for the individual articles in this collection are given starting on page 314.

We have made every effort to trace the ownership of all copyrighted material and to secure permission from copyright holders. In the event of any question arising as to the ownership of any material, we will be pleased to make the necessary correction in future printings. Contact Travelers Tales, Inc., 330 Townsend Street, Suite 208, San Francisco, California 94107. www.travelerstales.com

Art Direction: Michele Wetherbee

Interior design: Kathryn Heflin and Susan Bailey

Cover photograph:Martine Mouchy/Getty Images. Eiffel Tower at night.

Maps: Keith Granger

Page layout: Cynthia Lamb using the fonts Bembo and Boulevard

Distributed by: Publishers Group West, 1700 Fourth Street, Berkeley, California 94710.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Paris: true stories / edited by James OReilly, Larry Habegger, and Sean OReilly

p. cm. (Travelers Tales)

Includes bibliographical references and index

ISBN 978-1-60952-074-8

1. Paris (France)Description and travel. 2. Paris (France)Civilization.

I. OReilly, James, 1953- II. Habegger, Larry. III. OReilly, Sean.

IV. Travelers Tales guides.

DC707.P2548 2002

914.3'36104dc 21

2002010183

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Take those two words, gold and pleasure, for a lantern, and explore the great cage of Paris.

HONOR DE BALZAC

THOM ELKJER

JOHN GREGORY DUNNE

JOSEPH DIEDRICH

HERBERT GOLD

LYNN SCHNURNBERGER

JACK E. BRONSTON

SHUSHA GUPPY

EDMUND WHITE

HELEN DUDAR

MARYALICIA POST

JAN MORRIS

LOREN RHOADS

MICHELE ANNA JORDAN

TIM OREILLY

HERBERT GOLD

DAVID ROBERTS

COLEMAN LOLLAR

MORT ROSENBLUM

DONALD W. GEORGE

TARAS GRESCOE

INA CARO

MAXINE ROSE SCHUR

CAILIN BOYLE

HANNS EBENSTEN

BOB BRADFIELD

IRENE-MARIE SPENCER

LAWRENCE OSBORNE

GEORGE VINCENT WRIGHT

DAVID APPLEFIELD

TISH CARNES BROWN

MARCEL F. LAVENTURIER

THRSE LUNG

ROBERT DALEY

CORI KENICER

INA CARO

JULIAN GREEN

We are all outsiders when we travel. Whether we go abroad or roam about our own city or country, we often enter territory so unfamiliar that our frames of reference become inadequate. We need advice not just to avoid offense and danger, but to make our experiences richer, deeper, and more fun.

Traditionally, travel guides have answered the basic questions: what, when, where, how, and how much. A good guidebook is indispensable for all the practical matters that demand attention. More recently, many guidebooks have added bits of experiential insight to their standard fare, but something important is still missing: guidebooks dont really prepare you, the individual with feelings and fears, hopes and dreams, goals.

This kind of preparation is best achieved through travelers tales, for we get our inner landmarks more from anecdote than information. Nothing can replace listening to the experience of others, to the war stories that come out after a few drinks, to the memories that linger and beguile. For millennia its been this way: at watering holes and wayside inns, the experienced traveler tells those nearby what lies ahead on the ever-mysterious road. Stories stoke the imagination, inspire, frighten, and teach. In stories we see more clearly the urges that bring us to wander, whether its hunger for change, adventure, self-knowledge, love, curiosity, sorrow, or even something as prosaic as a job assignment or two weeks off.

But travelers accounts, while profuse, can be hard to track down. Many are simply doomed in a throwaway publishing world. And few of us have the time anyway to read more than one or two books, or the odd pearl found by chance in the Sunday travel section. Wanderers for years, weve often faced this issue. Weve always told ourselves when we got home that we would prepare better for the next tripread more, study more, talk to more peoplebut life always seems to interfere and weve rarely managed to do so to our satisfaction. That is one reason for this series. We needed a kind of experiential primer that guidebooks dont offer.

Another path that led us to Travelers Tales has been seeing the enormous changes in travel and communications over the last two decades. It is no longer unusual to have ridden a pony across Mongolia, to have celebrated an auspicious birthday on Mt. Kilimanjaro, or honeymooned on the Loire. The one-world monoculture has risen with daunting swiftness, weaving a new cross-cultural rug: no longer is it surprising to encounter former head-hunters watching