Recycling in Paris Just Got Easier

Now that most Parisians are used to dropping off their Christmas trees at at the city's 174 recycling points since the Mairie de Paris (City Hall) introduced the practice in 2016, this year they're making it even easier to recycle everyday items in Paris!

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Cut Down on Packaging: New Paris Shop to Buy Cleaning and Beauty Products in Bulk

I know a lot of people are trying to cut down on packaging, but it hasn't been easy to buy in bulk using your own containers in Paris. But now the Italian chain Negozio Leggero (Italian for “Shop Light”) has finally opened a location in Paris’s 3rd arrondissement near République.

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Parisians: Recycle Your Christmas Tree

Don't leave your Christmas tree on the curb for the landfill when you can drop it off in one of 174 collection points around Paris (mostly in parks and green spaces) to be recycled into mulch. 

http://www.paris.fr/recyclonsnossapins

Each year the City of Paris accepts trees for recycling from December 26-January 26th. They should be:

- without a plastic bag (take it out and throw out the bag once you drop it off)

- without any decorations, flocking or tinsel (and if you're still doing that to your tree you probably don't give a sh** about the planet anyway)

- cut or rooted, both are accepted as long as they're real trees and not plastic trees

Most of the collection points are open 24/7, just check the website for the one closest to you. 

NOTE: This article is an updated version of the same from 2016.

Ho-ho-hum. Christmas in Paris

When you’ve gone around the merry-go-round of life as many times as I have, all you really want for Christmas is a thrill. Fact is, I don’t need more things (though a cattle prod would make a nice stocking-stuffer; I’d use it on those people trying to mow me down with their motorized scooters). No, what I want these days is adventure, tension, risk. Unfortunately, Paris tucks away its general surliness for the holidays, the way you might return Grandma to the old folks home. Everything is placid. You’re reduced to sipping vin chaud at a brasserie, sniffing the aroma roasted chestnuts (trust me, that’s better than eating them), and admiring dancing marionettes in the windows of the Galeries Lafayette.

There was an opening for excitement the other day when I stopped in a small store...

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Is Paris's Bibliothèque District Cool Enough for Instagram?

When Parisians think of the 13^th (if they think of it at all), they usually think of Chinatown or even the Butte aux Cailles, both which are highly Instagrammable. But this particular corner of the 13^th arrondissement, known as the Bibliothèque district after the massive national library at its center, is not the place tourists usually want to Instagram. To most of them, it “doesn’t look like Paris”. But it’s actually quite photogenic and refreshingly contemporary if you’ve exhausted all of the possibilities of the Haussmann-and-cobblestones genre (and you know what you’re doing with a camera, which – clearly – I do not). And there’s Bob’s Café, which in itself may be exactly the bait needed to lure a few curious tourists out of their comfort zone. But more on that in a moment. First, let’s get a sense of where we are, exactly.

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New Hemingway Book Launch at Abbey Bookshop

One of the best parts of being an English speaker in Paris is the abundance of literary opportunities available throughout the city. Paris has always been a cultural mecca and often the temporary or permanent home of many English-speaking writers, from Ben Franklin to Mark Twain to the Lost Generation and beyond. Ernest Hemingway captured the imagination of worldwide readers like no other, and people come from all over to experience “Hemingway’s Paris.” There are plaques on the buildings he once lived in, tours dedicated to his old haunts, lines that queue up outside Cafe de Flore and Les Deux Magots so people can drink a coffee where Hemingway once sat.

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