Delicious Funky Bodegas

Paris property values are too high to support large urban grocery stores.

If you plan to make dinner at home, you first must stop at the meat place, the fish place, the produce place, the bread place, the wine place, the cheese place, the flower stall and the pastry place.

A pear or a peach might cost a few Euros each, but you can believe it'll taste like a vintage pear, and each juicy bite will be more delicious than the last.

As a foodie, I would have gone nuts planning a menu for a dinner party. Alas, my neat freak flatmates made Martha Stewart look like a hillbilly hoarder eating pork n' beans from a hacked open can, so I wasn't about to soil the tiny kitchen with a lot of chopping, schlepping and stove top work.

Paris really is the city of romance.

It's not hard to spot an elderly couple squashed into a dimly lit alcove, making out and groping each other like a couple of horny teens.

To contemplate preparing the ultimate Parisian seduction dinner was a fantasy I indulged in at least twice a day. Just a salad alone could be assembled to look like a Matisse abstract.

Shock of all shocks, I actually lost weight while I was in Paris.

All that walking could have accommodated a 4,000 daily calorie intake without adding an ounce of flab.

We'd start each morning with a warm, flaky pomme tart, the apples subtly sweet and melting into the layers of buttery pastry. A pot of coffee accompanied the tartes, along with an unfortunate substance they called half and half which was sold unrefrigerated. We think it may have been breast milk, but who can say?

Sometimes we'd change things up for a breakfast of croissants, creamy French butter and a confiture of slightly sweetened, fat cherries.

Pastry and coffee for breakfast should become a law in all countries.

There is no substitute for leaving the house in the morning without the comfort of a tummy filled with coffee and pastry. None!