Rue Debelleyme

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Location: Rue Debelleyme – Paris, France

Paris, October 9, 2021

Dear friends,

Have you ever turned a corner and felt like you’d stepped into another world? That’s how it was for me, when I first stepped onto rue Debelleyme in December 2012.

That sounds a bit extreme, particularly when you consider that rue Debelleyme is a single-block pedestrian street in the north of Le Marais, home to a single shop on one side and an apartment building on the other. But for me, it was a discovery. Our move to Paris in 2012 came with an enormous list of unknowns, including some pretty significant ones like how will we manage to pay this much rent for an entire year when neither one of us is working? and is a year at an expensive culinary school really enough to allow Ian to completely change his career path? (The answers turned out to be, we’ll figure it out and, yes, respectively.) And so, to temper my (fairly serious) anxiety, I took refuge in a hastily developed routine.

I could still recite that routine from memory, telling you what chores and errands I did each day of the week. I took the same paths to the same places time and again, because they were safe and familiar. With limited disposable income, I mostly stuck close to home to avoid temptation. Which meant that for the first several months we lived in Paris, I didn’t discover much of the neighbourhood beyond the grocery store, the post office and the bakery. This was my big Parisian adventure – but a lot of the time, I was too nervous to truly take advantage of it.

And then Christmas holidays came. It’s hard not to get swept up in the magic of Christmas, especially in a city like Paris, where every shop window is decorated for the occasion and every neighbourhood puts up its own tree. Ian had time off from school, so we went exploring together. One weekend, we went to a Philippe Conticini book signing at Le Bon Marche, then got pastries from the nearby outlet of La Patisserie des Reves. Most weekends weren’t quite that exciting, though. In fact, most weekends we simply wandered the neighbourhood.

We lived on rue Saint-Sebastien at the time, a single-block street just on the east side of boulevard Beaumarchais. Being on the east side it is, effectively, outside of le Marais, if only just. In our tiny, dark apartment, where pipes frequently leaked from overhead and the washer was constantly breaking down, we did often feel a world away from the glamour of the trendiest neighbourhoods in the city. So mostly, when we went out our front door, we turned right, towards Oberkampf. Oberkampf is a working class neighbourhood that felt more accessible on our limited budget, and the metro stops we frequented most often: Richard-Lenoir and Saint-Ambroise.

But we could choose to turn left, too. And, eventually, one Saturday, we did, crossing boulevard Beaumarchais and taking a street we’d never explore before. As we walked, the buildings seemed to slowly get taller and the doors wider. We just kept going straight, until we found ourselves in a strange spot where the road was fenced on one side. Straight ahead was the loveliest, most modern store and, just around the corner, within a hundred metres of home, was an outpost of The Rose Bakery. (They’ve all but shut down now, but in 2012, The Rose Bakery was an expat hotspot with locations in all of Paris’ most covetted spots, including Le Bon Marche.) This was rue Debelleyme. I couldn’t believe it.

The street isn’t quite the same anymore. My beloved boutique has since been replaced by a Vejas sneaker store. The nearby Rose Bakery didn’t last, either. It’s been almost ten years, so it’s not surprising that the landscape has changed. But I learned from rue Debelleyme that Paris is not a place to adhere to routines, because in staying on safe, familiar streets, you miss countless opportunities for discovery. There is nowhere in the world where the statement, you never know what might be around the corner rings more true.

While the landscape may have changed, rue Debelleyme remains as charming and lovely as it ever was. Staying on boulevard Beaumarchais, we’ve walked past it countless times already since we arrived in Paris two days ago. The little fence at the corner never fails to bring a smile to my face. It’s a single block, home to nothing of any real note. But for me, it will always be notable. On this little street, I learned that the safety of routine is no match for the wonder of discovery.

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