Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [59]
Paris Web sites
Some sites about Paris that I regularly browse include:
Bonjour Paris (bonjourparis.com), run by American expat Karen Fawcett. Regular subscribers receive a complimentary weekly missive, but only with a paid premium subscription do users have access to all the articles on the site (see more details in the Miscellany).
Paris Through Expatriate Eyes (paris-expat.com), created by “Anglophonic, Francophonic Francophiliac” Terrance Gelenter. The site not only includes a great list of recommended reading, but also includes information on Gelenter’s travel-planning service and airport transfers, insider tours, restaurant reservations, etc. And he offers several apartment rentals that look terrific. As author Pete Hamill has said, “If you believe that Paris is the most beautiful city in the world … if you want to better understand the mysteries of the Parisian character, then Paris Through Expatriate Eyes is the place to be.” Subscribers receive a biweekly newsletter, The Paris Insider, and for twenty euros you can be a prestige member and receive a number of benefits. Gelenter is also the author of Paris par Hasard: From Bagels to Brioche, which I’ve not yet read but am looking forward to. He also organizes swell gatherings in Paris—one of these days I will make it to one of them.
Secrets of Paris (secretsofparis.com), maintained by Heather Stimmler-Hall, who has written for a number of periodicals and travel guides (Fodor’s, Michelin, Time Out, etc.). She is also the author of a nifty guide called Naughty Paris: A Lady’s Guide to the Sexy City (Fleur de Lire, 2008). Hall has been writing a Secrets of Paris newsletter since 2001, and she covers a wide variety of topics for first-time and repeat visitors. She is also available as a tour guide for half- and full-day tours, and plans customized itineraries and self-guided tours.
Paris: History, Architecture, Art, Lifestyle, in Detail, edited by Gilles Plazy (Flammarion, 2003). “The ambition of this book is to prepare you for Paris, to remind you of the city when you reluctantly return home, or to console you if a journey to the City of Light proves an impossible dream.” That passage, from the foreword, accurately describes this very large, heavy (about eight pounds!), and gorgeous book. I positively love it, mostly because it’s so big that I feel it goes on forever. Each time I open it I discover there is so much I haven’t seen previously. This book is heavy enough to be a coffee table, but it is a very worthy (coffee-table) book indeed, and I do believe it is worth the price (list price about $95) for those who are insanely passionate about Paris. With contributions by eight writers and hundreds of color and black-and-white photographs and reproductions, this is a true tour de force.
Paris to the Moon, Adam Gopnik (Random House, 2000). I have my own story about when this wonderful book of Gopnik’s “Paris Journal” columns from the New Yorker was still a manuscript: I was working on the first edition of this book and I had earmarked two of Gopnik’s columns for inclusion. These were “The Rules of the Sport”—a hilarious account of the time Gopnik tried to join a Parisian gym—and “Papon’s Paper Trail,” about the 1998 trial of Maurice Papon, who was charged with complicity in crimes against humanity during the German occupation of France in World War II. (The trial was, according to Gopnik, “the longest, the most discouraging, the most moving, at times the most ridiculous, and certainly the most fraught trial in postwar French history”—all reasons why I wanted to include the piece.)