August in Paris & I Want to Stay Here

It’s August when well-to-do Parisians flee the city like lemmings, leaving the other critters behind. But for the past eighteen years, I’ve opted to stay here. To be truthful, August is my favorite month in the City of Light; it’s the one when you can veg out and, yes, restaurants are open. Honest.

Even though my husband and I owned a wonderful house in Provence, which was situated in the midst of the vines—with a pool and all—I’d rent it out during July and August and hightail it to Paris. I didn’t like the crowds or having to place an order for the next day’s bread unless I planned to be in town at 7 heures précises. If I wanted the International Herald Tribune, it had to be ordered since they were snapped up by all the Anglophones who were passing through. There were simply too many tourists, and trying to go around a caravan of trailers (loaded to the gills with more equipment than you can imagine) lost its charm.

When we bought our house, it wasn’t in a chi-chi area. There was one design store and next to nothing for those hunting for bling. A butcher selling horsemeat didn’t qualify.

But after it was discovered, Vaison-la-Romaine assumed the characteristics of anything but a quiet village. Thank you Patricia Wells for writing At Home In Provence and so many others books that were researched or written from her mas overlooking the town.

Our area of the Vaucluse became so crowded that locals stopped going to the Tuesday market. You’d have to watch out for your feet and shoulders, and wrap yourself around the sack of fruit you had purchased since it would invariably end up squished in the crowds. Ah, welcome, you busloads of tourists, and after the Tour de France added to Mont Ventoux’s fame (did you see Lance Armstrong?), the area was on engraved the map of must-see places in France. So much for the summery charm of Provence.

As a result, the area became increasingly chic, so if we rented during the house high season, we could recoup part of the cost of running our country digs that were high akin to dumping euros into the ocean. Being a city girl, dealing with a septic tank was nothing I’d ever experienced and could pass on the privilege, merci.

My husband, who died three years ago, hated leaving Seguret no matter the season. He wanted to watch fruits of his labor grow in the potager. Victor poured over seed catalogues every winter. Each year, he’d become more ambitious as he spent hours squatting on a stool in this plot of land, placing each seed in the earth with slide rule precision.

He spent hours with neighbors and farmers from the area discussing what would grow best. It was Victor’s garden. He came by this passion naturally, maybe genetically. Victor was a man of the land and felt if you couldn’t get your hands dirty, you were missing out on one of life’s greatest pleasures. He was born and raised in Italy and constantly recounted his childhood memories of climbing up and down the stairs next to where he lived on the Italian Mediterranean. The stairwell was surrounded by fig trees. He could as a boy watch figs grow—imagine that—for hours, so as a man it made sense for him to watch zucchini grow.

Good for him, but the garden was mine to weed and to water—and why the hell didn’t the automatic water system shoot water where it was supposed to go rather than shooting it elsewhere? Then there were those zucchini. I’ll spare you the gory details about what you do with a vegetable that grows so large overnight that it could be used for a baseball bat and as abundantly as kudzu.

I was much more pragmatic. I loved entertaining in the South. But there were some days when I felt as if I were running a hotel and conducted more than my share of wine tours though the Côtes du Rhône. In addition, just as I sold the house, it was only then that FranceTel took the leap and installed lines so people could connect computers via DSL rather than being forced to use dial-up modems that were so slow (and took multiple attempts) that I could do the laundry while waiting to hear, “You’ve got mail.”

I grew up in an apartment and didn’t love my summer forays to girls’ camps where we slept in tents and had to walk (for what seemed like forever) to the cabin with toilets and showers. Plus, there were those ever so unexpected encounters with snakes and other animals that crawled in the night. When we finished renovating, expanding, and landscaping our perfect house in the vines, I couldn’t believe there were critters crawling in the night, and dear Kitty, whom I mourn each day, would present us with snakes. Perhaps I loved her more when she became a city cat.

If you think Paris is hot in the summer, double that when you think of Provence—and throw in the wind. Depending on where you are and whether or not the mistral is blowing, you can broil. It’s not that I don’t love the area; I do. It’s simply that I prefer to visit when there are fewer people on the roads and vying for, well, everything.

If anyone tells you Paris closes during the month of August, that’s nonsense. Yes, “my” bakery will shut down and I’ll simply have to walk a block further if I’m craving a croissant in the morning. Or, they have terrific frozen ones (don’t tell) at Picard. They’re open during August (even on Sunday) and if it’s a hot day, spending time in one of their stores is a great way to lower your body temperature. It’s even cooler than the movies with their air conditioning—and you don’t have to buy anything.

One of the things I love about being in Paris during August is that everyone who is here is very much more laid back than when business and work are in full gear. Gatherings happen spontaneously and people you might never have met appear to turn up where you least expect to find them.

How do you feel about being in Paris during August or any big city where people (if they can afford it) take off for the country?

© Paris New Media, LLC