Field Notes: 3 days in Paris - Le Marais, Hidden Gardens & Grand Palais

andersart56

Jul 18

3 min read

Paris has a way of making you believe that walking is enough.

Not walking to something. Simply walking.

For three days, Kyle and I wandered the city mostly on foot, lingering over coffee, ducking into bakeries, crossing bridges simply because they were there, and letting history interrupt us whenever it pleased. We weren’t trying to see everything. We wanted to see enough to

leave room for surprise.

We stayed at Hôtel Caron de Beaumarchais, tucked into the heart of the Marais. The hotel is inspired by the eighteenth-century home of playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, whose Marriage of Figaro dared to poke at the French aristocracy just years before the Revolution. Listening to The Rest Is History podcast on the flight over made the neighborhood come alive in a new way. Just a short walk away stood the site of the Bastille, where those revolutionary ideas would soon spill into the streets. History in Paris never feels confined to museums. It lives in the sidewalks as you stroll by.

View towards the entrance of Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris from sidewalk. handwritten chalkboard signs frame the foreground, with a black and white image of a cat on a book. Large front windows are filled with books and the store's iconic deep green trim.

Close up of the opening page of A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. The cream colored page begins with the title. Near the center is a circular stamp from Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris reading "Kilometer Zero Paris" marking the book as a souvenir from the iconic english language bookstore near Notre Dame.

Books & Bread

One morning we wandered without much of a plan, eventually finding coffee and rhubarb pastries at the little café beside Shakespeare and Company. While Kyle lingered over a second coffee, I climbed the narrow stairs into the bookstore I’d dreamed of visiting for years. Upstairs, readers quietly disappeared into books beneath open windows. I left carrying A Moveable Feast, feeling as though Hemingway himself had quietly slipped it into my hands.

We continued on to the Panthéon, where Victor Hugo, Rousseau, and Marie Curie rest beneath one extraordinary dome. Foucault’s Pendulum swung slowly through the silence, quietly proving the Earth turns whether we’re paying attention or not.

By then our thoughts went to lunch.

At Maison Isabelle, still warm baguettes filled the shelves, and next door at Laurent Dubois, one of France’s celebrated Meilleurs Ouvriers de France cheesemongers, we gathered Comté, impossibly good butter, and a few treasures from a neighborhood produce stand before settling into the peaceful potager garden at the Musée de Cluny.

It remains one of my favorite lunches of the trip.

Just bread.

Butter.

Cheese.

Fruit.

A garden.

Sometimes simplicity tastes extravagant.

View from inside Place des Vosges in Paris, looking across the pale crushed limestone gravel paths towards on of the square's grand triple-arched entrances. A mature tree stands along the right edge of the frame, it's leafy branches stretching across the upper third of the image like a natural canopy.

Gardens

The older I get, the less interested I am in checking famous places off a list.

I’m much more interested in the places where people still gather.

We loved wandering through the Marais, watching children play soccer in the Place des Vosges while neighbors lingered at cafés long after finishing their meals. We crossed the Seine again and again, discovering quiet streets and crowded ones, elegant arcades like the Galerie Vivienne, bustling market streets around Les Halles, and eventually neighborhoods that felt rougher around the edges.

Paris never tried to be one thing.

It was beautiful.

Messy.

Elegant.

Graffiti-covered.

Grand.

Ordinary.

All at once.

A classic French meal served at a cozy Paris Bistro. A tender breaded veal cutlet rests on a bed of sautéed vegetables, a rich gravy spooned alongside and a generous serving of creamy mashed potatoes. The warm presentation captures the comforting, unpretentious style of a traditional neighborhood meal.

One evening, after dinner at Le Temps des Cerises, we wandered along the canal where hundreds of young Parisians had gathered with friends. They shared bottles of wine, music drifted from portable speakers, and nobody seemed particularly interested in their phones. They simply sat together until dark.

Watching them, I couldn’t help thinking:

They’re going to be okay.

Brushstrokes

I expected to love the Musée d’Orsay.

I didn’t expect to feel so understood by Hilma af Klint.

The Impressionists reminded me to look carefully.

Monet.

Morisot.

Cézanne.

Van Gogh.

They all painted light itself.

But at the Grand Palais, Hilma af Klint painted something else entirely.

Spirit.

Pattern.

Possibility.

As someone drawn to symbolism, Nordic mythology, spiritual practice, and abstraction, I felt as though I had stumbled into a conversation already taking place inside me. Her colors, geometry, confidence, and willingness to trust what she couldn’t fully explain left me quietly changed.

She reminded me that not all artists are trying to record what they see.

Some are trying to make visible what they sense.

Before leaving Paris, we wandered beneath the glass pyramid at the Louvre, explored the shops in the Carrousel, found a beautiful kitchen store, and eventually made our way back to the hotel with gelato in hand.

By then we had walked miles every day.

Our feet hurt.

Our backpacks were heavier.

Our world somehow felt lighter.

That last evening we skipped another grand dinner.

Instead, we quietly gathered a few simple things for our room and rested before an early train to Switzerland.

Paris had already given us enough.