Paris Werewolves

Paris manages to squeeze over 2 million people into about 41 square miles. By population, that makes it less dense than Manhattan (about 56,000 per square mile, compared to about 71,000). But with thousands of tourists visiting every day (so far there does not seem to be an off-season) and millions of workers commuting in from the suburbs, even the homely 16th Arr. can feel pretty crowded at times. Luckily we're very close to the Bois de Boulogne, about 2,000 acres of mostly wooded parkland, trails and man-made lakes. The forested area in which it sits has been used and re-used for every imaginable purpose, including general brigandry, dueling, royal hunting preserves, monastic communities, and bivouac sites for conquering British and Russian troops following the rout of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Emperor Napoleon III transformed the forest into a public park in the 1850s--although conquering Prussian troops would briefly revive the bivouacking tradition at the end of the Franco-P...

It's not entirely easy having a dog in Paris. On one hand, dogs seem to be everywhere. You can pretty much take them into most stores and even some restaurants allow dogs inside. On the other hand, very few neighborhood parks permit dogs. It's hard to say I blame the city for this. Parisiens are notorious for not picking up after their dogs. At least the parks offer some outdoor space where you don't have to be on your guard constantly against stepping in dog shit. One of the dog-friendly exceptions in the 16th Arr. is the 15-acre Jardin du Ranelagh. Modeled after the Earl of Ranelagh's London gardens, le jardin welcomes dogs (and others) to stroll the footpaths surrounding its lawns, landscaping and playgrounds. Better still, it has a large, fenced-in, off-leash area along the Petite Ceinture (part of a reclaimed railway path that ran along the outskirts of Paris until the mid-20th century). Like most neighborhood parks in Paris, le jardin is also home to great public ...

L'Île aux Cygnes (Isle of the Swans) is one of Sugar's regular walking spots. It's a kilometer-long, man-made island in the middle of the Seine between the 16th and 15th Arrondissements. The Isle's namesake Foraging along the shallow edge of the Isle Because there is no traffic, it's a great spot to unleash the dog for a bit, even if we have to be mindful of the other people strolling the allée --and especially the many joggers during the lunch hour. I've seen few places with more smokers than Paris has, and few with more joggers. I guess that's their idea of a healthy balance. At the south end of L'Île (where we start our walks) stands one of the original mockups of the Statue of Liberty--facing south, so you only see her backside from the Pont de Grenelle or the Isle itself. La derriere de la Femme de la Liberté At the north end of L'Île is the Pont de Bir-Hakim, commemorating one of the early Allied victories against Rommel in North Africa. Bir Ha...

It took over a month to get WiFi installed in our first apartment. We made do by using the free WiFi at the outside gardens of La Maison de Balzac, a museum in the writer's former home. It did not take long to realize that this location provided one of the best unobstructed views of the Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower) in the 16th Arr. Le Tour from the Maison de Balzac There is no shortage of Tower views from the 16th, given its height, the overlook from Trocadéro, and our clear sightlines from the Seine. Even if you feel like the Tower gets more than its share of exposure, it just has a way of creeping into the scenery. Sugar at L'Île aux Cygnes (The Isle of Swans) From Pont de Grenelle, overlooking the Seine and LÎle aux Cygnes Full moon from Pont Mirabeau Having seen enough of the Tower (maybe), I took shots of the other three Cardinal points from the same spot on Pont de Grenelle. Unglamorous Paris needs love, too. Looking NE from Pont de Grenelle Maison de la Radio/RadioFrance t...

Paris is divided into 20 administrative districts called  arrondissements . Made up of smaller named neighborhoods, each numbered arrondissement has its own economic, social and cultural flavor--distinctive from one another without ever losing their common Parisien-ness ( Parisienité ?). Our apartment is in the 16th ( seiziéme  or 16e) arrondissement. Compared to the Champs-Elysées luxury of the 8th, the cultural magnificence of the the 1st (home of the Louvre) or the academic bohemianism of the 5th and 6th, the 16th is considered a bit bourgeois--sleepy, even boring. It's primarily residential, with little to draw tourists--the major exception is the Jardins du Trocadéro, with its wide open vista of the Eiffel Tower. Sugar at Trocadéro For me, being outside of the tourist core--but still within easy transit of the entire city--was one of the 16th's main assets. We enjoy quintessentially French institutions like the open-air marchés, boulangeries, parcs and bistros, but keep m...

  Six months ago we were sitting in Potrero waiting to return a rented Toyota Tacoma to the SFO rental car lot. We needed the pickup truck to haul the last of our possessions to the Recology e-waste dump. Except for two suitcases and duffel bags of clothes that were coming with us to Paris, everything else we owned had been sold, given away, donated, or junked. Now we just had to drop off the truck and catch a redeye to JFK. From there, we would rent another car--smaller and more sensible than a full-sized pickup--swing through Maine for a few days, and then hurry back to NYC for another redeye to Charles DeGaulle. That was the start of our Paris venture. We were retired, solvent and as free as people responsible for transporting a dog to another continent could be. We knew we had a one-year tourist visa and were booked for one month in a small apparthotel in the 13th arrondissement. Beyond that, everything was wide open. I didn't intend to keep a log or journal of the trip--j...

When I started this blog, the guided setup asked for a page name and url. Since I had no real vision for this site other than it would be about our time in France, I fell back on my usual method of drawing from something I was currently reading, watching, or listening to (that's how in the past I ended up with wifi networks named "Beast mode" and "Aquaboogie"). I had just finished reading Guy Endore's "The Werewolf of Paris" (published in 1933) so the name naturally suggested itself. The book itself is a pretty good read--although with some very unsettling descriptions of the werewolf's cannibalistic habits. The setting of the main action within the yearlong siege of the 1870 Paris Commune is riveting and reads very true to the desperate conditions of starvation, savagery and mass murder described in historical treatments such as Alistaire Horne's "The Terrible Year." But to Endore's point, what's one murderous, body-snatc...