1. I was already familiar with the word “concierge” before I moved to Paris, but it didn’t mean what I thought it did. To me, a concierge was a person working at a fancy hotel who hooked you up with theater tickets or restaurant reservations. Here in Paris, a concièrge is a person, usually a woman, who lives in an apartment on the ground floor of your building and takes care of tasks like distributing the mail, cleaning the common spaces of the building, and sweeping out the courtyard.
2. It’s easy, when you’re working or just going about your life, to forget that you live in Paris; I know I often did before I started giving guided tours again. That’s why I love catching people walking by something that would make a visitor to Paris stop, like this gated courtyard.
3. When I lived in New York, I did my book shopping at the Strand. Now that I’m in Paris, I do a lot of it at the bouquinnistes. These little stands along the Seine are one of my first memories of Paris: my dad took me here when I was ten and bought me a hair clip with Renoir’s “In the Meadow” on it.
4. Paris is home to so many little hidden streets that sometimes, you can end up on one, in the middle of the day, where you’re all alone (or nearly).
5. Paris is home to over 200 churches (though most French people these days don’t attend services). While most of them are free to visit whenever you like, it’s all the more tempting when the doors are flung open like this, to reveal the Gothic architecture and stained glass windows within.