The key to successful urban planning is providing a sufficient number of boulangeries

My true love and I have been traveling to Paris since 2004 and we have always stayed at the same hotel – Citadines Didot Montparnasse. It is located in the southern part of the 14eme arrondisement in a residential middle class neighborhood, far from Notre Dame and the Louvre. It is far from luxurious but the location, for us, is perfect.  That is partly due to Paris’ magnificent public transportation system that allows us to get almost anywhere reasonably quickly and easily. There is a bus line, subway line, and trolley line all within a five minute walk.

More important, though, are the businesses on rue Didot, the street where the hotel is located.  Most of the street is, like much of Paris, lined with six story apartment buildings with retail on the ground floor and most of that retail has to do with food.  Yesterday, I talked about the five bakeries on the street. Each makes delicious bread and each has a mouthwatering selection of pastries.

Yet we know that man (and woman and child) does not live on bread (or éclair caramel) alone.  On the same short block as the boulangerie/patisserie is a boucherie (butcher), poissonerie (fishmonger), and the French equivalent of a convenience store with a pretty good selection of wine.

Further on down the street is a dairy store featuring products from a local goat farm and a full scale wine store with erratic hours.  Across the street is a produce stand where the proprietor practices his English on me while I practice my French on him.  There are two other produce stands on rue Didot but both are closed for summer vacation.

Up the street a little bit is a fromagerie (cheese store) and a new shop featuring organic produce and wine. Then there are the several traitteurs (takeout/takeaway) shops that provide Italian, Chinese, and Lebanese food, the shop with Middle East desserts, and the brand new biscuit (cookie) shop.  

Oh yes, let’s not forget the dozen restaurants that range from fast food (fried chicken, Chinese, Domino’s Pizza) to neighborhood bistro to formal sit-down Italian.

And then there’s the wonderful mini-grocery store that occupies most of the ground floor of the hotel.

As a guest at the hotel, I adore all this. The rooms all have small kitchens with stoves and fridges. So, for example, we could have a big lunch at Relais de L’Entrecôte (more in a later post) and for dinner, I can assemble a delicious salad of mache, avocado, tomato, watermelon, and Spanish ham followed by some amazing bread and cheese and accompanied by a moderately priced Chablis and the entire package purchased in five different shops less than 150 meters from our room.  Said meal can be eaten on the balcony as we watch the life of the neighborhood take place before us.

What I find remarkable is that there is nothing remarkable about this in Paris.  There are streets like this everywhere here. Everywhere.  I’ve talked before about how fortunate I am in Philadelphia to live in a neighborhood that is so alive with food availability but that pales before the routine in Paris.

The museums, churches, heritage, and architecture of Paris is amazing but I find the street life to be fascinating. In every neighborhood in every arrondisement there are people buying things from small shops or talking with friends over drinks at cafes, bars, tabacs, or brasseries.  At 7am there is a bar down the street where half a dozen retired men get together over coffee to go over yesterday’s news and at 11pm there is a handful of twenty-somethings gossiping over wine at the cafe across the street. These scenes are occurring all over the city with dozens of others like them creating a vibrancy I’ve never seen anywhere else.

Now this could probably only occur in a highly dense and economically stable urban environment (Paris meets both criteria) with a diverse and effective public transportation system and architecture that encourages street life (Paris meets all those criteria, too). Whatever the reasons behind this, though, I have to wind this up so I can pick up a couple of freshly baked croissants across the street.