The week in a flash

A message from an unhappy camper

A fruity interpretation of a Christmas wreath

Pont Alexandre III... elegant as ever.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Primary School Holiday Bazaar

Sunday morning walk through the Tuileries park.

Lunch delivery until restaurants open up again in January 2021

A night jog under the lights of the Eiffel Tower

Selling my Paris greeting cards for a good cause

Brocante or Movers?!?

Paris in the fall

Those were the days...

Gone are the days when restaurants and bistros were open for business. Paris' social scene has come to a screeching halt during Covid times. We are into our second confinement and no one could had ever dreamt that the year would end in such a desolate manner.

Hospitality sites may not be permitted to reopen until next year, as "non-essential" shops and religious sites wait to find out if they will be able to reopen from December 1st. It has been decided to postpone Black Friday from Friday Nov 27th to Dec 4th! Imagine someone would have told you last year that Black Friday would be held a week late?!? If the government can do that, it can get away with anything!

While some restaurants in other countries have managed to adapt to lockdown conditions by offering a takeaway or delivery service, in France the traditional eat-in model has been harder to reinvent. The good news is that florists will be able to sell Christmas trees outside their shops beginning today.

Hanging in there until further notice... President Macron is scheduled to hold another speech on Tuesday.

Lockdown No.2

Passy is my hood. It is one of Paris' many endlessly entertaining neighborhoods with real people that make cozy communities in the midst of this vast, high-powered city. People know their merchants as if it were a village. You find a frenetic and human vibrancy that tourists often don't get to discover.  

Bustling with delivery trucks in the morning, people queuing in front of bakeries at lunchtime to buy their "Menu sandwich", kids running across the pathments with their scooters at 4:30pm and young office workers enjoying Happy Hour on the bistro terrace after work. I usually have to dodge Parisians walking their dogs and pushing baby strollers in Passy's vibrant market street.

It has all gone eerily quiet these past two weeks and although children are still allowed to attend school streets are empty, restaurants and shops are closed, traffic is down to a minimum and the mood is somber and rather resigned. 

During the the first lockdown it seemed the Parisians were still defiant putting up their usual feisty side, this time around we are continuing our daily routine as best we can working around restrictions and just waiting to get through this year 2020.

... and then we went into lockdown... again!

Friday afternoon and we are heading back to Paris early after a short half-term break. We cannot ignore the heavy feeling in our stomach. 

As of today France is on highest terrorist alert and on total lockdown. The only difference is that schools remain open as do the parks. However, if you live further away than 1km of a green space you won’t be able to reach it since the max radius to walk, run or grocery shop for necessities is 1000m.

We are heading into at least four more likely six weeks of staying home 24/7 except for the kids who - until further notice - are allowed to attend classes. 

Education is probably the main reason many parents are heading back to the Hexagon's capital this weekend given that most of us have been recommended to “télétravail” whenever possible. Nevertheless, over the past two days Paris has registered over 1000km of traffic jam heading OUT of the city!!!

Expat daughter who will be turning 18 soon is not happy because according to her these are suppose to be the best years of her life. Now that she is finally old enough to go out at night and meet up with her friends for a drink, she can’t even ride her bike to enjoy a bubble tea in the Marais with her besties!!!

Whatever the situation, it too will pass and as long as we stay healthy and safe we will come out the other end eventually... in the meantime I am stocking up on bottles of Prosecco and continuing my yoga classes online to keep sane. 

Happy Halloween

Napoli in black & white

Closed until further notice

As of last Tuesday all of the capital's bars have been closed as Paris upgrades the alert level to the maximum due to a surge in COVID-19 cases. Restaurants and bistros will be allowed to stay open if they put new sanitary measures in place, which include registering the contact details of customers and closing at 10 pm. 

Some of us still venture out to have lunch with our closest girlfriends or dinner with couples whom we are close to, sitting on the terrasse tucked up in woolen sweaters and winter coats as to avoid eating inside. However, the insouciance of enjoying un flûte de champagne during Happy hour has definitely disappeared and the sad thing is we don't know for how long.