Originally from Toronto, Canada, I came to Paris in the 1990s. Decades later, I’m still here (quite by accident, but here nonetheless.) Come with me while I roam the city, the country, and beyond.
“Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” Mary Oliver
“Wherever you go, go with all your heart.” Confucius
Valencia, Spain. November 2022.
August 31, 2021
Lisbon, June 2018
March 2017
March 2015
Juliet in Paris
Found you via Isabel Huggan’s blog Juliet. I live in Kingston, Ontario – and am off to Tornac to say at Mas Blanc next week. Your blog is beautiful!
Thanks so much, Wintergreen! Sorry for my belated response. Hope you are well in Kingston.
So interested in the French countryside. Please blog on!
As Robert L. Stevenson wrote: IT IS NOT THE DESTINATION, BUT THE JOURNEY!
And what fun the journey has been! And will continue to be….I’m not finished yet!
I have just stumbled across your blog….and I love it! So inspirational! Love your perspective. Thanks so much, Juliet in Paris.
Well, thank you, Jane, for your kind comments!
Me too. I also stumbled across your blog and enjoy it immensely for these reasons: no advertising, no big ego or self-promotion, a fresh, sincere perspective of Paris (and other cities) from someone who lives there, your humor and irreverence.
Oh, I know…there’s nothing worse than advertising on blogs, YouTube and everywhere else. So intrusive! Thanks much for your comment.
Keep up the good work!
I’ll try! Thanks!
Stumbled across your blog…what a keeper! Love your photos and commentary.
Thanks, Glenn. Welcome to my world.
That sounds a little bit pretentious, but I’ve always wanted to say that. Welcome to my world 🙂
Love your blog, very entertaining and informative. Keep it up!
P.S. Forget to mention – your photos are great, too.
Thanks so much, Ray!
Super! I enjoy travelling with you. Your London posts in particular are great.
Gee, thanks a lot Juliet. Just when I thought I had some free time I had to go and find your fantastic blog. Now I’ll be busy delving into your previous posts for the next few days. Great words. Lovely pictures. Thank you for this.
So you’re the guy with the boat whose video I (enviously) watched as you sailed over to Catalina in 2015! Have you left California for good now? And what about Daisy the dog?
No, i’m still here. Sailing a lot in different places though.
Juliet, Terrific blog. We have family visiting a student from Toronto in Paris next week and found everything you’ve posted just in time! Terrific photography and the insightful posts are a fine compliment. Please keep this going.
Thanks so much for your comment (and compliment), Paul. Best wishes to you and your family for 2017!
Juliet, Terrific blog. We have family visiting a student from Toronto in Paris next week and found everything you’ve posted just in time! Terrific photography and the insightful posts are a fine compliment. Please keep this going.
Keep up the good work! Love reading your reports from Paris.
So glad I stumbled upon your blog. You have gorgeous photos of Paris and other countries like Italy that I visited long ago. Thank you for such a wonderful website.
Hello Natasha Love (great name),
I too am glad that you stumbled upon my blog. Welcome! And thank you for your kind comments.
Have been reading your blog for at least a year now. I love the tidbits of information and that you are not afraid to express your opinions. Am retired and planning to live in Paris for part of the year. Your blog continues to assure me that Paris is the place to be! Thanks for the constant enticements.
Interesting! And after 20+ years living and working in Paris, I’m planning to retire somewhere (back home) in North America. Haven’t decided where yet.
I have been reading your blog since 2013, when I discovered your post about Antwerp, where I lived for a memorable year back in the early 1970s. My mother was Parisian, her father was Belgian, and I am able to hold on to precious recollections of years, travel, and people gone by as I read your entries. They are so evocative and well-written. I am reading The End of Eddy right now, having finished Hillbilly Elegy earlier this year. Both are enlarging my world view, for sure. Thanks for writing this interesting blog, and please continue to share your insights, even if you relocate back to North America, as you hint above!
Hello Christine and thanks so much for your kind and lengthy comment. Over the years I’ve communicated regularly (and/or sporadically) with many of my loyal readers … I’ve even met a few in person which was great fun. So it’s nice to hear from you at last. I enjoy blogging because it’s not static, it moves and changes all the time. I guess I see myself as a chronicler, just bopping around taking photos and talking about what’s new, what’s old, what’s up, what’s down. I’m off to Holland in two weeks, so stay tuned for a report from The Hague and Delft. You mentioned Antwerp. I might return there after Holland (it’s so close.)
Funny you should mention The End of Eddy. Two hours ago I purchased his latest novel, History of Violence (Histoire de la Violence). As for your compliment re my well-written entries – thank you! I hope, then, that you might be interested in reading my own book when it comes out towards the end of the year. It’s a memoir. I’ll post news of it on my blog when it’s ready. Thanks again for writing, Christine. Take care.
Love your photos and your travels … oh, and your irreverent viewpoints!
Thanks Anita! I appreciate your comments.
Loving your blog and photos (and recipes, and travels!) Keep up the good work.
Thanks so much!
Bonjour! I too am a “stumbler upon your blog” and have noted the frankness and bluntness — and I like it 🙂 ! I don’t always agree with you, but you are provocative and I am always glad to hear a contrary opinion or read a different view. Thank you!
So … there’s an awful lot to read here and I have been skipping around. I have lately been consumed with reading first-person accounts of the Paris attacks of 2015. Yours are helpful to get an inside story of what it was like there. At the time I was teaching in a French-American school (in the US), so I did have a kind of immersion in the event — my colleagues knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who died; it was a café they frequented; they were going home for Christmas and were worried about what they’d find … Still, you were in the city, and your November 13, 2015 entry was very moving because of the Léo Ferré song. Wow. I was unfamiliar with the song, and worked hard at translating it for myself before I read yours — thank you for that (I did okay :).
BUT! You left out one stanza, which was one that I was most curious about, so I’m wondering if you will translate it for me now??? Hope this is not too pushy, but … it is part of the song and I would love to read it! It is
Avec le temps…
Avec le temps, va, tout s’en va
Même les plus chouettes souvenirs ça t’as une de ces gueules
À la galerie j’ farfouille dans les rayons d’ la mort
Le samedi soir quand la tendresse s’en va toute seule.
I am pretty sure I understand it but I am not familiar with some of the vocabulary and idiom — and I’m not letting Google translate it for me.
I hope this is not imposing too much, and I hope you don’t mind me going on at such length.
Thank you very much, and stay well!
Ellen
Hello Ellen and welcome! I’m so glad to hear that you stumbled across my modest little blog. My original intention was to post my photos somewhere and do a sort of travel chronicle (as you’ve no doubt seen, I do like to travel.)
And then I guess I discovered that I have opinions, sometimes strong ones, as well as a voice and a point of view. So I express them here along with my photos, travel reports, and urban-cultural-sociopolitical events, many which happen right under my nose. It’s important to be curious about the world around us, and the world in which we live.
As for the translation of that Léo Ferré stanza, I’m wondering now if I purposely omitted it because I found it too hard to translate! Looking at it again, perhaps when he writes “même les plus chouettes souvenirs ça t’as une de ces gueules”, perhaps he used the word “gueules” as in “hangover”, you know, like “gueules de bois”, something that lingers and is a bit painful. So – “even the coolest (or grooviest) memories, you have one of those hangovers” ?
“A la galerie j’farfouille dans les rayons d’ la mort”. I’m not sure which type of gallery he’s talking about, there are many (parliamentary, art, a department or grocery store). “I search/rummage/browse in the death aisle/department” ? On Saturday nights when tenderness goes off on its own.
I’m writing a book, it’s a memoir. It should be out by the end of this year or the beginning of 2020. Stay tuned for the announcement on this blog.
Thanks for writing! Take care.