Some people speak as though the Paris of August weren’t really Paris at all but instead some illusory city, a movie set without the actors, everyone having moved on, leaving behind, like croissant crumbs for the ants, a handful of monuments and museums that no one who lives here would go to anyway. Some foreigners so want to identify with Parisians (God only knows why) that they’ll trash their fellow countrymen in order to feel a part of it all, telling friends back home that only the lowest of lowly tourists would find anything to enjoy about Paris in August. They tell horror stories of having to walk a kilometer to find a fresh baguette, the snob’s version of once having walked 3 miles to school in the snow.

Paris does indeed start winding down after July 14 and some quarters (particularly those whose residents actually do own country homes) can be quite zen for the first three weeks in August. But Paris in August is still Paris, just a calmer, kinder, less anxious, less pretentious version of Paris in September. August is Paris’s tranquil season, its month of Sundays, one of the many seasons of the city, each subtly different and with its own pleasures, surprises, and particularities. If Paris has been abandoned to tourists then I’m happy to be one of them.

Of course some of those sophisticated restaurants, bakeries, and chocolate shops that your favorite guidebook, newspaper or magazine has touted may indeed be closed for several weeks, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid Paris but rather that you should ditch the guidebook and the glossy magazines.

All the advice you need to enjoy Paris in August can be summed up as follows:
Walk.
Sit.
Eat.
Drink.
Laugh.
Sleep.

I suppose that one could also add: bike, jog, play tennis, relax, picnic, read, discover unheralded restaurants, strike up conversations, beware of pickpockets, attend an outdoor concert, dance the tango on water’s edge, etc., and perhaps love will come of it too.  

If you want to go full-out Julia Roberts and add “pray” to the list then you can do so in the hope that you’ll never need a locksmith or plumber or root canal in August in Paris—though the same holds true elsewhere in France.

Paris in August is still Paris. Before you know it everyone will be back, and those bakeries and chocolate shops and restaurants the foodies rave about will be open again, with slightly higher prices in the belief that no one will remember what they paid for anything in July. 

Did I mention that I was going into the Pyrenees for part of the month? Well you didn’t think I was going to hang around Paris all month, did you? I’ve found nice little village where I can walk, sit, eat, drink, laugh, sleep, and all the other great verbs of summer. Julia Roberts, eat/pray/love your heart out.

© 2010, Gary Lee Kraut

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Maurice, himself now in celluloid heaven, would be pleased to know that the praise he sung over 50 years ago is still so intimately attached to Leslie Caron that Thank Heaven is the title of her memoir, to be published on Nov. 30.

Thank Heaven (Viking) is a recollection of her life both professionally—among her many roles she has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Lili (1953) and The L-Shaped Room (1962), she once again appealed to our Francophilia in Chocolat (2000), and she made her mark on television in an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (2006), for which she won an Emmy Award—and personally—her love affairs, her three husbands, her divorces, motherhood, her alcoholism and depression, and finally her recovery. Living primarily in Paris, she continues to work as an actress as well as an innkeeper, since she owns Auberge La Lucarne aux Chouettes in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, Burgundy.

Leslie Caron will be in the United States for the following schedule of events coinciding with the release of Thank Heaven:

December 1, New York City. Barnes & Noble, 1972 Broadway, 7:30pm.

December 2, Philadelphia. Central Library, noon. Leslie Caron will be interviewed by Philadelphia Inquirer film critic Carrie Rickey. Attendance is free. That evening she will be the guest of honor of a gala dinner and film tribute organized by the Alliance Francaise de Philadelphie. Click here for further information.

December 4, Pasadena. All Saints Church, 7pm.
December 5, Los Angeles. Borders Books & Music, 7pm.
December 8, Hollywood. Receiving star on “Hollywood Walk of Fame,” 11:30am.
December 8, Beverly Hills. Tagore Gallery, 5:30pm.

France Revisited thanks Daniele Thomas Easton, former Honorary Consul of France in Philadelphia and Wilmington, for tipping us off about this news.

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