Finding the French Life in Boston—or Not

No matter where you travel, you take yourself and your acquired perspectives with you. Having lived in Boston for nearly ten years, my recent weekend trip was a type of home-coming. I made many friends in Boston and underwent innumerable life-enriching (and – impoverishing) experiences. I wasn’t happy about leaving there to move to Paris even though I disliked Boston’s winters and snow.

This visit enlightened me as to how much my years living in Paris have changed my frame of reference. No matter where I go, I’m constantly on the lookout for places that have a French look and feel. Perhaps this is normal for people who move around a lot. You feel at home everywhere, but lose the sense of home unless you have strong family roots.

A bit about Boston and its immediate surroundings: It’s estimated that 16 million tourists visit the city each year compared to approximately 28 million who come to Paris annually.

It’s home to some of the leading universities in the world, including Harvard and MIT. There are so many universities that if you have a complex about feeling old, skip going to the movies in Bean town—as a matter of fact, don’t go out. You’ll be surrounded by college kids. Ditto for the clubs since Boston has become a hot music city.

Many leading hospitals and research centers are headquartered in Boston. If you must get sick and have medical insurance, do it here.

The city is a leading financial services center. A large number of Boston’s visitors come to do business and eat some New England clam chowder… and feel poor these days after checking their portfolios.

If it’s like any city in Europe, the closest comparable would be a mini-version of London. It’s a city of defined neighborhoods—anyone can tell you where the Back Bay ends and the South End begins, for example—but its neighborhoods are constantly redefining themselves, becoming more gentrified… and more expensive. The Big Dig is over and one of its results is the elevated Southeast Expressway is gone. Engineers will tell you driving is safer. Anyone will tell you that nothing is much better looking than an elevated highway. This has removed a barrier between the Financial District and Quincy Market on one side and the North End on the other. But the open space is just that—open and rather bleak.

The North End, which for most of the last century has been Italian, still has plenty of Italian restaurants, but they have become cuter and fancier at the expense of simple neighborhood places. As in many other cities, the ethnic neighborhoods that defined the city at one time are under stress—the North End is now Little Italy Lite.

The history of Boston is some of the most interesting for scholars and others who are attracted to this city for its diversity and history. It’s largely built on landfill, the most famous exception to that being Beacon Hill, one of three drumlins, or small hills, that were part of the original city. The other two were leveled to fill in the Back Bay and provide foundations for the town houses of the Back Bay, the South End, Bay Village, and the lower part of Beacon Hill known as “the flat of the Hill.” Boston is a great city for architecture-watching.

People also flock there for its more accessible Tourist Activities. There are enough activities that target children and the young at heart that it’s hard to be bored. Climb aboard a trolley, take a Boston Duck amphibian tour, go to the aquarium, or follow Paul Revere’s trail. Faneuil Hall Marketplace is a magnet for visitors. The refurbished complex has store after store, restaurants that aren’t as good as they should be and a humongous food hall.

But there are French influences in the city. The Public Garden has the formal tidiness of Le Jardin du Luxembourg. And, you’ll get a similar Parisian since if you walk along quasi-glitzy Newbury Street. Pierre Deux has a store there and if you need a purse from Chanel, not to worry. Boston has it and more.

If you’re craving French food, you won’t go hungry. There are numerous French chefs who’ve made their mark from a stellar dining room at the Four Seasons Hotel ‘Aujourd’Hui,’ La Voile, Hamersley’s Bistro in the South End to a perfectly adequate eatery for French onion soup, Bouchée on Newbury Street.

One of the best places for Francophiles and Francophones in Boston is The French Library. There’s no question that people who in live and visit Boston are capable of having their French fix.

But one difference struck me that I can’t seem to shake. A flower store that had been on Boystan Street has a boutique in the Copley Square shopping complex. Its Newbury Street location has reopened but its biggest store is now located in the close-in suburbs. Where have all of the flowers gone? That’s one of the great attractions of Paris. Even if people don’t buy a massive arrangement, they can stop for a single flower in one of the many stores that are located on nearly every street corner. As lovely a city as Boston is, the lack of flower stores made an impression. It’s such a little thing. But yet it’s not.

© Paris New Media, LLC

[email protected]