🇫🇷 💌 The Paris Love Letter #156

THIS WEEK IN PARIS
Paris, Then the Countryside

This is issue #156! 🙌 Which makes three years of Fridays, and not one missed. Our first issue went out on May 5th, 2023, and we’ve shipped a new issue every week since.

More on what that means, and what's changing, next week. 😲 🤣

This week, a very special thank you goes out to everyone who’s been along for any part of the ride! 🙏

We took our son back to the Fontaine des Fleuves at Place de la Concorde. We'd visited the week before, and he'd planted himself in front of it for a full twenty minutes and refused to move. When we asked why, he said, "I feel connected to it. When I watch the fountain, I can see forever." So we took him back. After the fountain, we walked through the Tuileries, which in late April is exactly what you'd hope for, fully in bloom.

Now we're in Burgundy, visiting family during our son’s spring break. We've been to a local lake, walked in the woods, and eaten well. Paris can't always give me what nature can. As much as I love the city, I still need trees and open space once in a while. And a few days away from it always makes me love Paris even more.

Linking You to Paris

➡️ The 24 all-time best hotels in Paris for 2026: Condé Nast Traveller rounds up its 24 favorite Paris hotels for 2026, from legendary palace hotels to stylish boutique stays.

➡️ How to shop for perfume in Paris like a Parisian: BBC Travel shares a Paris fragrance expert’s smart, very French guide to shopping for perfume in the city.

➡️ The baguette faces an uncertain future: CNN Travel looks at why the baguette’s place on French tables is shifting as tastes, habits, and bakeries evolve.

➡️ What to do in Paris this week: Sortir à Paris highlights the week’s best Paris outings, from bread festivals and exhibitions to concerts and family events.

REFLECTING ON PARIS
A Jungle Gym and a Guillotine

Growing up in America, my sense of old was relative. A building from 1850 felt ancient. A town founded in the 1700s seemed as old as the Romans. Then I moved to Paris and recalibrated.

I think about this every time I stand in Place de la Concorde.

My son climbed on the Fontaine des Fleuves last week like it was a jungle gym. He had no idea where he was. That innocence is something I keep reflecting on. Because for me, that square carries a lot.

During the Reign of Terror, somewhere between 1,100 and 1,300 people were executed by guillotine right there. Louis XVI. Marie Antoinette. The blade came down in the same place where my kid is now hauling himself up onto a bronze fountain to get a better look at the water. There is no marker dramatic enough for what happened there.

And then there's the building right on the square, Hôtel de Crillon. On February 6, 1778, Benjamin Franklin walked into that building and signed the first treaty of alliance between France and the United States. France became the first country to formally recognize American independence, in a room overlooking the same square where its own king would lose his head fifteen years later. The U.S. Embassy sits a short walk away.

In the center of it all stands an obelisk that is 3,300 years old, carved under Ramses II, brought from Luxor in Egypt. It is the oldest monument in Paris. Older than the city itself by more than a thousand years.

My son found something in that fountain. He sat with it for twenty minutes, still and quiet in a way kids rarely are. He said he felt connected to it. He said he could “see forever.” I don’t know exactly what he means, and I'm not sure he does either, at least not with language, but it was real to him. The experience mattered.

I look at that square and see history and stories that I often share with tour guests. The guillotine. The treaty. The obelisk older than the city itself. He saw a jungle gym, and then he saw something else, something I can't name.

Which raises a question I don't have an answer to. Does any of it matter, the history, if you don't know it? It only means something to me because I learned it. It only occupies space because I'm aware of it. Everything I know about this square changes how I see it. My son has none of that fog.

His relationship with that fountain is completely unencumbered by that context, and I wonder whether his experience is more present. Maybe it's more honest. A 3,300 year old obelisk, the site of a thousand executions, the birthplace of a Franco-American alliance that helped create the country I'm from. These are all ideas about the place that fascinate my eager mind. My son simply experienced the place as it was in that moment.

He climbed onto the fountain and felt something personal he couldn't fully explain. I saw revolution. On the surface, we experienced the same place. On another level, we experienced two different places simultaneously.

FRENCH PHRASE OF THE WEEK
"Faire la grasse matinée"

The Phrase: "Faire la grasse matinée"

Phonetic: [fair lah grass mah-tee-nay]

Literally: "To do the fat morning."

The Context: The French do not just sleep in. They faire la grasse matinée, and the difference matters. Grasse here does not mean fat in the unflattering sense. It means rich, indulgent, full. The same word is used for crème fraîche, for the lush hills of Normandy, for anything that implies abundance. A grasse matinée is a morning you wallow in. No alarm, no rush, nowhere to be. The French built a phrase around it because they believe it deserves one.

How to use it:

• The Sunday Morning: The boulangerie can wait. The croissants will still be there at ten. You roll over, pull the covers up, and faire la grasse matinée.

• The Holiday: You are away, the pace has slowed, and for the first time in weeks there is no tour to lead and no newsletter to write. Grasse matinée.

• The Parisian Weekend: No meetings, no obligations, windows open, coffee eventually. This is what Saturday was made for.

How I Found This Phrase: We are in Burgundy this week for spring break. I would love to faire la grasse matinée. Our son has other plans. He is up early because the lake is waiting, and apparently, that cannot wait.

FRENCH SONG OF THE WEEK
Les Rita Mitsouko - Marcia Baïla

Les Rita Mitsouko were a Paris duo, Catherine Ringer and Fred Chichin, who formed in 1980 and became one of the most original acts French pop ever produced. Marcia Baïla came out in 1984 and spent 29 weeks on the French charts, reaching number two.

The song is a tribute to Marcia Moretto, an Argentine dancer and friend of the band who died of breast cancer in 1983 at 36. The music video, with costumes by Jean-Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler, became a cultural moment. Decades later, it was played at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics. Some songs just don't age.