Lost in Paris

Outside Prohibido, a bar at Rue Durantin and Rue Tholozé.[Photo/The New York Times]

FOUR days after I arrived in Paris, I bought an umbrella. It had been raining on and off the entire time, and during my daily walks I'd been carrying a lightweight waterproof shell - bright green - which at the first sign of precipitation I'd unroll from its bundle and zip up, often removing it just minutes later, when the skies temporarily cleared. This was silly, I kept telling myself. There had to be a better way.

Still, I never set out specifically to buy the umbrella. It was only when, one Monday morning, I had decided to stroll the streets of St.-Germain-des-Près, the tony Left Bank neighborhood, that the urge struck me. It happened, appropriately enough, in front of an umbrella store on the Boulevard St.-Germain.

This was no mere umbrella store. This was Alexandra Sojfer, and its windows were dazzling displays of parasols, frilly and bright and elaborate and not exactly my style - but umbrellas nonetheless. Inside, I asked about the wares, and the shopkeeper, a refreshingly friendly blond woman, who I later realized was Ms. Sojfer herself, explained that the company had been in the umbrella business since 1834 and that yes, they did carry more masculine, utilitarian rain gear. She showed me two models, a long one and a short one, both with fine carved-wood handles.

"But you know," I said, "I come from New York, where the wind is strong and the streets are littered with the skeletons of dead umbrellas."

Not to worry, she said. If any of the metal struts were damaged, I could simply return it to the shop to be fixed.

"O.K.," I said, hefting a short, gray one, "I'll take it."

Then she carried the umbrella behind the counter and asked me for 240 euros.

I handed her a credit card.

For the next 10 minutes, as I sipped an espresso she'd made me and filled out the French tax-rebate form, I tried to understand what had just happened. Had I really spent 240 euros (about $320 at $1.33 to the euro) on an umbrella, one that, albeit sturdy, was not significantly different from a 24-euro umbrella? With the V.A.T. rebate, of course, the total would be reduced by 39 euros, and surely this coffee was worth at least 1 euro, so really I'd spent only 200 euros. Only.

One thing was for sure, I thought as I walked out of the shop into a suddenly sunny and rain-free morning: This was something I'd never done in Paris before - had never even imagined doing - and that was exactly why I was here, to see what new experiences could be wrung out of a city I've visited every two or three years since 1994. I've been here in the frigidity of December, in the full baking heat of August, on glorious late-spring and early-autumn days when the city is at the height of its considerable beauty. I've come alone and with family, to visit the woman I later married and to try to survive on dollars a day as the Frugal Traveler for this newspaper. Paris was where I tasted sweetbreads for the first time, where I bought my first suit, where I learned it's O.K. to walk out of a restaurant that's treating you poorly. I know Paris, not perfectly, but well.

In recent years, my activities increasingly centered on a relatively constrained area, the Right Bank neighborhoods stretching from the Marais, the old Jewish quarter turned fashionable outdoor mall, up to Montmartre, across the trendy, bourgeois-bohemian Canal St.-Martin and down to the immigrant quarter of Belleville and the riot of bars and cafes surrounding Bastille. At the same time, my group of Parisian friends had expanded and crystallized; I had a ready-to-go posse whenever I stepped out of the Métro.

But as I prepared for a weeklong visit in early September, I didn't want to just return to my favorite places and wallow in nostalgia. I wanted to see if it was possible to re-experience Paris as if for the first time, to be amazed by the reality of the place instead of comforted by its familiarity. Because seeking out the "new" in Paris is problematic in a city where change comes grudgingly, if at all, I set my sights on the yet-unfamiliar. How could there not be delightful restaurants, art galleries, little-known immigrant pockets and underground jazz clubs I'd never discovered?