Granny’s Gone CouchSurfing… to Paris Jan 2013

Picture shows the 6th floor Maids’ garrett… CouchSurfing in Paris

Granny’s Gone CouchSurfing


(Just Back from Paris)

For the Telegraph ‘Just Back’ Series Jan 2013 

500 words

  Among other clichés, I’m a baby boomer – a hippy child of the sixties, who’s recently discovered the wonders of being a couch surfer. The CouchSurfing founding principle is:  ‘to make meaningful connections with local people whilst travelling’, which chimes nicely with my worldview.  

 So, I’m just back from a weekend in Paris where Claudine, a secondary school science teacher in her 50’s, hosted me.  Her flat, typically Parisian with its hefty, coded street door, was conveniently by the entrance to Metro Ledru Rollin near the Bastille. “I’m up in the maid’s garret on the 6^th floor,” she’d texted. “I hope you are fit.” 

 My ‘couch’ was a single bed in what used to be her son’s room.  There were no windows in the flat, just skylights. It was untidy – but in a cosy, bohemian way.  Clothes, books and papers were strewn around. Boogie, Claudine’s cat, gave me lots of amusement with her mooching and sniffing at the various heaps before choosing her bed.


The following two days passed in a pleasant haze as I wandered around mid-winter Paris, pausing to enjoy the antics of tear away, hoody speed skaters on the (free) ice-rink in front of Hotel de Ville and marvelling at the Christmas lighting spectacle along the Champs-Élysées.  Both mornings I breakfasted in the sumptuous restaurant of the department store Printemps Haussmann up in the roof, under the beautiful, art nouveau, stained glass dome or cupola. 


For those (like me) on a budget, lunch up on the 6^th floor of Galleries Lafayette is the place to go: and, be sure to visit the open terrace on the 7^th    floor for its wonderful Paris view.


A favourite Paris dawdle of mine is along Rue de Rivoli in the direction of Rue Saint-Antoine, St Paul’s and The Marais, areas which survived Napoleon the Third’s architect, Haussmann, who, in the 19^th Century, drastically remodelled Paris. The shopping is great, as most shops are thriving independents.

 While in the area, take a breather is Place des Vosges, a small, pretty park surrounded by an ancient arcade of shops, galleries and brasseries.

 Another ‘not-to-be-missed’ landmark is the world famous Shakespeare & Co, a bohemian bookshop/community on the left bank, more or less opposite Notre Dame. For decades, callow, bookish, penniless romantics – usually young men from The States – have flocked here to work voluntarily, sleeping literally amidst the bookshelves in makeshift bunks, elated to be part of a scene where the greats such as Hemingway had once hung out.


That evening I sat in on an informal writing group gathered upstairs. After, we repaired to a nearby bar tabac, where the more we drank the stronger the ghostly presence of Hemingway, Joyce, Orwell and the others grew in our imaginations. It’s easy to see why Shakespeare & Co. inspires so many young people to come from overseas – and to find themselves following in the shadowy wake of the greats who’d trod these same locales and byways all those years before.