Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [39]
CATHARINE REYNOLDS, who was most recently a contributing editor at the former Gourmet, also wrote the magazine’s “Paris Journal” column—which was honored with a James Beard Foundation Award in 1998—for more than twenty years. Reynolds is currently working on a biography of Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s finance minister.
“To err is human, to stroll is Parisian.” The peripatetic Victor Hugo’s bon mot requires a word of counsel: visitors intent on enjoying Paris’s endlessly captivating cityscape need select their maps as painstakingly as their walking shoes. A certain sort of traveler is compelled to seek out a map of a new city upon arrival, if not in advance; a self- abusive breed disdains such support. In Paris hardened cartophobes eventually capitulate if they wish truly to understand the city.
Only pseudo-sophisticates recoil at the sight of “site seekers” squinting at unfurled foldouts, struggling to trace the path from picture gallery to supper. In Paris, map toting is no newcomer’s proclamation of ignorance. The most knowledgeable taxi drivers cannot know each of the city’s 6,417 streets offhand; instead they pack copies of Paris par Arrondissement in their glove compartments. (Those who don’t, warrant the curses of their hapless customers.)
But what constitutes a good map? Stationers and bookstores overflow with options. Flat maps tend to be cumbersome, and so small map volumes, albeit more expensive, are a sound investment. A straightforward choice for a short stay is the classic L’Indispensable, a 7 by 4½ inch navy volume that for the past fifty years has lived up to its name, with omnibus lists of government offices, embassies, schools, hospitals, museums, churches, department stores, theaters, movie houses, et cetera. L’Indispensable offers a thumb-indexed alphabetical list of streets followed by maps of each of the city’s twenty arrondissements, with some of the larger ones meriting two maps, as well as plans of the bewildering Défense business complex. A large folded map at the back allows an overview of the city and suburbs.
The privately owned L’Indispensable publishing house brings out thirty-five different map formats in five languages, but its maps suffer on the whole from old-fashioned graphics, which, however evocative, can be less than easy to read, as are most of the maps produced by the firm of A. Leconte.
Many Parisians prefer the maps put out by the thirty-year-old firm of Ponchet, most of which wear practical black plastic covers. Ponchet produces a volume similar to the standard, midsize Indispensable, as well as a 12 by 8½ inch Grand Paris, ideal for those daunted by the challenge of map reading in jackrabbiting vehicles. Their numbers must be growing, as this map has been a runaway success among Parisian motorists struggling to find either restaurants or friends living on obscure streets.
The beige ink favored by the firm of Plans-Guide Blay renders its maps less appropriate for walkers and drivers than for cipher clerks, who might also relish the challenge of the miniature typefaces and creative abbreviations in the staple-bound map booklets. These volumes offer the attraction of being compact, but they prove ultimately disappointing.
On the other hand, Michelin, whose yellow-clad road maps are models of the genre, puts out an exemplary if large 12¼ by 9¼ inch Atlas Paris par Arrondissements. Unhappily, Michelin’s smaller Paris map book does not divide its maps by arrondissement, which is slightly