Should you find yourself in front of the Gare du Nord (and you will if you’re taking any train north, including the Eurostar to London), pop into the new Carton, lauded for winning first prize in the 2022 best butter croissant contest in greater Paris.

Everything in this shop is exquisite … and reasonably priced too. When I take the Saturday morning train up to Lille, I order a continental breakfast for only 5 euros 90. Orange juice, espresso, half a baguette, a generous portion of butter and jam. Delicious.

Japantown offers a large choice of restaurants, and last night my godson and I found a pearl of a place that I will definitely return to.

Sit up at the bar so you can watch the sushi chef at work.  YOU restaurant, 56 Rue Sainte-Anne,75002 Paris. Rue Sainte-Anne is the epicenter of Japantown, also called Little Tokyo, with its Asian restaurants, grocers, shops, bakeries, and more.

Here’s the grocery store, K MART, stocked full of Korean and Japanese products. We went in and I purchased two bottles of soy sauce – one reduced-salt, the other sweet – and some Japanese candies that looked like Fruitella.

After our meal of tempura and sushi, we strolled down the avenue de l’Opéra, turned right onto the rue St. Honoré and left onto the rue Saint-Roch towards the Tuileries Gardens. Very much in vogue right now is this exterior ornamentation that graces many cafés and bistros around the city. Great bunches of colorful fake flowers.

It was still bright out at 9 pm. The rue de Rivoli and the Tuileries Gardens below.

If you could see the leaves of these magnificent, not to mention historic, horse chestnut, plane, elm and oak trees, you’d weep. Mottled gray with burnt leaf tips and scabs, they’ve been coated with air pollutants for so long they’re completely damaged. We sat on a stone bench and talked about the ravages of air pollution. “If I were mayor of Paris,” said my 10-year-old godson, “I’d ban all normal cars, trucks and motorcycles and impose only electric ones.”

Let’s fire all the adults and put kids in charge. After all, it’s their future.