Let’s get the obvious question out of the way: yes, I moved to Paris. No, I did not have a romantic crisis, a terminal diagnosis, or an Eat Pray Love moment that drove me there. I moved because I could. And because the butter is genuinely better.
I’m Layne — a proud American woman of a certain age living the life in the heart of Paris with her 13-year-old, very-opinionated pug whose name is Boots. When not scamming for food Boots loves to stroll along the Seine. Well, when I say ‘stroll’ I mean ‘stroller’. He likes me to walk along the Seine while he does the people-watching from his grand chariot aka his doggy stroller.
Before Paris there was a long career doing things that involved events, pitch decks, angel investing, new inventions and one patent. It’s been a good run. But at some point you look in the mirror and realize time isn’t infinite for any of us and I have at least one more grand chapter of discovery in me and that’s starting in Europe. It’s right there, but oh-so-far away.
So I did it; I really, really did it.
But here’s what nobody tells you: moving to Paris is not a long-form vacation. It is a full contact sport involving visa applications, French bureaucracy, and the humbling experience of discovering that your perfectly adequate conversational French is, in fact, not adequate at all. The French are wonderful. They are also not particularly interested in befriending Americans who cannot conjugate the subjunctive.
I made mistakes. Still am. And I’m writing them all down to share with you.
That’s what this is — Dispatches from A Broad. Part field guide, part cautionary tale, part love letter to a city that has not always made it easy to love. There will be practical guides for anyone crazy enough to follow this path, opinions about food that border on the religious, cultural adventures, fashion observations, day trips, weeklong spa trips (divine!) and the occasional dispatch from Boots, who has now been carried in his sheepskin-lined tote bag through more European cities than most people visit in a lifetime.
Living the dream? Yeah, the dream with tears. But you can too — and just maybe I can help you skip a few of them. Whether you’re making the actual leap to France or just following along from your couch, this blog comes without the baggage.