The Price of Looking Good and Eating Well in Paris

Luxurious breakfast at 61 Berthier

Back in Paris earlier this month, I finally had a chance to develop film, see the lady friend, and catch up on several months' worth of missed cheese and sausages. Oh yes, and blow lots of money on new clothes.

This time, you see, I finally felt like I was starting to figure out Paris.

Here's the secret: the City of Lights is really just one big conspiracy to make Americans feel our clothes are all several sizes too big, before presenting us with endless—and endlessly expensive—options to overhaul our unfortunately baggy wardrobes. (This is more or less what I've been doing for the last year, in the course of a number of trips, to the detriment of my bank balance.)

But once the French have you swaddled tightly in unflexing fibers (I've had little luck finding more comfortable "stretch" garments here), then they hit you with the food, making it even harder to breathe in the shirt that fit—by French standards—back in the store, but now clings to your abdomen less like a shirt than like a second skin. Duck confit, croque-monsieurs, baguettes, tarte tatin, lardon-laden salads, moules frites, more cheese than you could ever imagine... I fall into this bottomless pit of Parisian indulgence every time, without fail.

How to know when you've eaten too much? You can't—at least not until the next day. Then you'll know if, after a long night out during which you drank enough wine to kill a small pony, you rise delightfully hangover-free because your stomach contained so much cheese and bread that all the wine was absorbed, leaving you refreshed and ready to repeat.

Not that I'm complaining! Below, enjoy some of my Rolleicord pictures from this latest Paris trip, including several from a nice afternoon with friends in the Jardin de Luxembourg:

The full album is available here.