Weekend in Paris #3
A tribute to my mom, apéro with friends, and the home of this city's #1 baguette.
Weekend in Paris is a bonus series for paid subscribers—it’s one part recap of my off-duty fun as a baking school student, one part dishing about (temporary) expat life. Bienvenue!
The weekend started on an unpromising note.
From the moment I moved in, my shower had been slow to drain. A few days earlier, I’d mentioned this to my (blessedly kind and responsive) landlord, which prompted her to show up at my doorstep with a bottle of European Drano and a smile.
Unfortunately, that attempted solution only served to back things up further, which I discovered during my next shower when water began pouring out of the stall, onto the bathroom floor, and down the adjacent hallway.
Thus began my three-day relationship with François, my sixty-something, chain-smoking French plumber.
Because we communicated solely through Google Translate, I was never quite sure what he was doing, only that he was supremely dedicated to fixing the problem, which involved demolition work on part of the bathroom wall (and the better part of twenty work hours).
By the time Saturday rolled around, after days of zero-to-limited running water and too much quality time with François, I was ready to call the weekend a failure before it began.
But I scraped myself out of bed—and I’m so glad I did.
When I returned from the day’s adventures, François was finishing up, and through various explanatory hand motions he conveyed that things were back on track.
In today’s letter, you’ll read about how I salvaged my weekend:
🎨 The special way I honored the second anniversary of my mom’s passing,
🥂 My first apéro with classmates (with its surprise Emily in Paris tie-in), and
🥖 My bakery haul from the winner of 2024’s “best baguette in Paris” award.
