Free Paris, My Sweet by Amy Thomas

infinite cafés, comparing café crèmes and croissants, all the while catching each other up on our lives. And while I had fared pretty poorly on the restaurant front—not yet knowing the best spots or realizing that you absolutely must have reservations in Paris; walk-ins are rarely accepted—we’d managed at least one magical meal at Chez Janou, a Provençal bistro in the Marais.
    After spending hours exploring the historic quartier, pausing only once from shopping to sit on the grass in the perfectly symmetrical park, Place de Vosges, we walked north and stumbled into this cute and colorful restaurant as the lunch rush was dying down. Sitting at a table in the back, we grinned at each other, finally experiencing that “ahh, yes, this is the meal we’ve been waiting for” feeling.
    First came the rustic country bread with an almost tart sourdough flavor that was served with a bottle of freshly pressed olive oil and a small dish of pungent whole olives. We savored these southern beauties and sipped rosé while strategizing what to choose from the menu—from ratatouille to stuffed peppers to sea bass grilled with pesto, you could just imagine the bountiful flavors that lay ahead. I ended up ordering brandade de morue , a traditional dish from the south of France of salt cod pureed to the consistency of instant mashed potatoes and baked to rich, buttery perfection in a terrine—it was totally new to my taste buds and utterly delicious. We were all in love with our meals and didn’t even save room for dessert, but, even so, there was something so decadent, and so perfect, about the five of us sitting there at four o’clock in the afternoon with full bellies and wine buzzes.
    But the problem with having visitors, I discovered, was the deafening silence after they left. I had been in Paris for several months now and was accustomed to taking countless solo strolls, feeling pangs of envy as I walked by the cafés with their jam-packed terraces of cavorting friends and no way of breaking in. But when the girls returned to the States, the void they left was giant. Thankfully though, I was beginning to make new friends on this side of the Atlantic.

    Yummy…
    â€¦A hot handmade bread.
    â€¦A super flaky apple turnover fulled with real fruits.
    â€¦The surprising flavor of cumin in an olive bread.
    Sounds good for you?
    For someone who had studied French in high school and college, in groups and one-on-one, via cassettes and with workbooks, and yet never exceeded a third-grader’s proficiency, I had grossly underestimated how long it would take me to pick up the language. Even Josephine’s best efforts were taking eons to sink in.
    But it had never even crossed my mind that it might also take forever to meet people. Unlike my pathetic linguistic skills, making friends had always been relatively easy for me. In addition to the girls from high school, I still have strong bonds with my college roommates and friends from San Francisco. At previous jobs, my team members and I were always chummy. Granted, it’s somewhat a by-product of advertising—a young and boozy, glamorous and grueling industry where frequent happy hours and debauched bashes, interspersed with mad hours and the occasional all-nighter, provide the perfect bonding opportunities—but still, at every agency, I’ve walked away with at least one friend for life. Not so in Paris.
    My colleagues at Ogilvy were a worldly and motley bunch. There was Pat, the Labrador-puppy-friendly Irish guy who sat next to me and always thought out loud and farted silently, and Lionel, my kilt-wearing, mohawk-shorn, French-Vietnamese art director partner who, despite his rock-and-roll looks, was so shy and soft-spoken, I felt as loud as a Texan in a ten-gallon whenever I spoke to him. My bobo (“bourgeois bohemian”) creative director, Fred, who breezed in and out of the office for frequent scooter rides