Vegans in Paris

*Pre- Quarantine Edition: Taking the time and space to write about past travels that I don’t have up quite yet, thank you for all of the patience & continued support. Love & miss you all so much I hope you’re finding time to re-focus on things you’re passionate about until we can all be on the road and together again. Until then I hope you enjoy some blasts from the past. <3*

Paris is a beautiful city known worldwide for its amazing and decadent food options. With cafes and restaurants within a few feet from one another on every street it can be hard to traverse the vast amount of food to not only find vegan options, but delicious vegan options. During my stay it took awhile to figure out just how to do this. During my time in Paris, I stayed near the very tourist latent part the 7th arrondissement. This place is somewhat vegan friendly at best. Luckily high school french taught me enough to known the words for milk (lait), butter (beurre), fish (poisson), meat (viande) and so on, but without any French it would have been a major struggle where I was staying. A short cut to remembering is Je suis végétalien(ne), Surrounded in a culture that thrives on and perfects meat and cheese based dishes, I was a total outcast from most food spots we went to. Generally living on salad, pasta and wine narrowly avoiding fish in several instances because vegan seems to be synonymous with pescatarian to many Paris locals that I encountered. When you’re in France make sure to elaborate on what you can and can’t eat. I ended up accidentally eating something with butter in it and experienced stomach problems that I hadn’t had for the last three years. Not fun to have tummy troubles when you’re out and about. Another aspect of all food in this area, vegan or non vegan was the cost. Granted the closer you are to the Eiffel tower, the more expensive everything will be, but with that in mind my family of 5 spent almost 80 euros (86 USD) on coffee and croissants one morning. I highly suggest staying far away from the epicenter of Paris for eating and inhabiting if you’re on a budget and want to have accessible vegan options. In this area, there were tons of people, everything is crazy expensive, several pickpocket scams throughout the area and so on. I was almost pick pocketed when I was signing a petition to “Save the children” a common gimmick to trick tourists into not paying attention while others in the group rob you senseless. If your’e like me, anymore than a few hours in this type of environment can send your emotions and mental state for a spin. Amidst the chaos and general craziness I did manage to find some food options outside of bread and salad. One of my favorites and one of the only options that suck out to me in this area was a veggie burger from Le Petit Suffren. A cute little corner restaurant with lots of outside seating. Make sure that you order it without any of the mayo and cheese. One of my favorite meals that I had here and while I was chowing down I had the opportunity to witness a bomb squad and police collect a discarded and colored propane tank. Maybe it was one of my favorite because it also came with an exhilarating show. I don’t have much else to report on restaurants in this area. The food that I had to request vegan wasn’t the best. There was also an issue king at home s well. I wasn’t in love with a lot of the ingredients I picked up for cooking, and even raw fruit/veggies were not that great in this area of the world. Needles to say, I felt kind of sick spending 5 days here and eating mostly gluten and i’m sure accidentally cheese and dairy along the way. Even with some french under my belt it was difficult, especially when paris locals laugh at you for your accent.

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I feel very blessed I was able to experience this area, but if I go back it will be for the sightseeing not to stay and definitely not for the food. Some of the must see sights are the Eiffel tower (especially at night), The catacombs if you like creepy parts of history such as myself, the lourve, & if you’re willing to rent a car and drive a few hours, Omaha beach. Whenever you go to a museum, particularly in Jun-Aug (peak season), it’s entirely worth it to spend the extra euros to get a guided audio tour. Typically this is in the form of a small device that will tell you all about the place where you are/ the art your’e observing. I saw details in paintings and underlying themes that I would have never been able to see on my own and learned things while walking through the catacombs that I otherwise would have missed. Not only the learning aspect, but you typically get to skip massively long lines. Other honorable mentions is the church on the hill known as Basilica du Sacre. It’s a massive church on a large hill in the center of Paris. Being the heathen I am i’m not much for the religious aspect of landmarks, but the neighborhood around the beautifully built church is filled with artists, amazing small shops and much cheaper food. along with vegan options (eeeep 🙂 ) as long as you’re not trying to get food in midday in this area. Most smaller shops will close down in this time frame and may be entirely closed on certain days of the week such as Monday and Sunday (To my dismay).

Although I wasn’t thrilled with vegan options in the 7th district, there are lots of cost effective and environmentally friendly ways to get around to other spots that are more vegan friendly. I took a lime scooter over to go to cloud cakes cafe in the 2nd district of Paris, the ride in total was around 10$ and about a two minute walk to find a scooter. If you’re in an area that has these scooters they are really fun and an awesome way to get around quickly and not hassle with traffic. Traffic is something you have to be really mindful of when you’re in Paris due to people in this area of the world driving tendencies, and the sheer volume of people trying to use the small roads all at once. For example, when driving around the Arc De Triomphe, a 7+ laned (I still don’t understand how many lanes there were) free for all for countless cars with bikes and people all over around and weaving through traffic, traumatizing to say the least. During peak hours it can take hours to get from one end of Paris to the other, so any other type of transport that’s available besides driving is more ideal in my eyes for this area of France. After my scooter ride, I walked into a beautiful space surrounded by some of the first tattooed humans I had seen in a week and other more alternative looks. I felt more at home in this tiny bakery than I had anywhere in Paris. I found a vegan menu filled to the brim with awesome pastries and drool educing lunch items. After seeing the online menu of veganized classic french deserts with beautiful aesthetics my mind had already been made up before I walked through the front door. One of everything please & thanks.

Another side note on restaurants; Throughout Europe, instead of requesting water make sure you ask for tap water. That way not only will you be saving money on perfectly clean and safe water, but in most instances you’ll avoid using unnecessary plastic. On that note, if you have room in your suitcase, remember to bring a reusable bag. It’s good practice for wherever in the world you go to a grocery store to avoid single use plastics, but also there’s an extra fee and a lot of judgement that accompanies asking for a plastic bag in France and most European countries (woohoo 🙂 ).

The one & only

Towards the end of my stay I was able to convince my very omnivorous family that I needed a French meal from an all vegan restaurant while we were there due to paris being world famous for their vegan food. We attempted to go to many different all vegan spots, but once again we were foiled by Europeans set ideas about when restaurants should be open. Many restaurants in this district close from 15:00-19:00, and unfortunately this was when we arrived. rip. I had a lot of amazing vegan food, but only got to try one all vegan place. That being said the one place, Cloud cakes, did not disappoint at all. I got to have my very first macaroon of my life and it was better than anything I could have imagined or hoped for. Even though I didn’t go to another all veg spot, I found some other yummy treats along the way.

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Death before dairy

My favorite thing that I had the opportunity to do when I was in Paris was to go to the catacombs. Not a very vegan-esque thing when it comes to the mind of most people, but history and death have always been a fascination of mine and I highly recommend going and checking it out for yourself. Basically all of Paris was used as a limestone mine so there used to be many hollow spaces that they built Paris on top of. Once pieces of the new kingdom started caving into the ground while simultaneously mass graves were breaking open and contaminating land, water and air they decided to fill the hollow spaces with over six million skeletons, this necropolitan has a population of about three times the size of its surface neighbor. Some of my other favorites were going to Omaha beach in Normandy on the north coast of France. If you’re not proficient with roundabouts I would take a bus from the center of the city, it would be about a two hour bus ride. Also going to the louvre to see paintings that I had been learning about since child hood was a surreal experience, The raft of medusa, Liberty leading the people and of course the Mona Lisa. For any museum/ excursion you partake I suggest splurging on audio headsets. The headset at the Catacombs allowed us to skip the monsterous line for only 30 more euros & at the louvre we rented headsets for 5 euros a piece with an interactive map and full stories for many paintings on its background, historical significance, elements of the paintings and their significance, and details about the painter. Extremely worth it.

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takeaway-

My takeaway from being in Paris is come for the art, culture and miles of piles of bones, but don’t stay in the very center of it all unless you like the chaos then maybe it’s the perfect place for you. I feel eternally blessed that I was able to see some of the most beautiful works of art I’ve ever seen and have been dreaming about since I was little. There’s nothing I will be able to compare to seeing the lights of the Eiffel tower at night or playing in the fountain of Warsaw when it was hot with my little brothers. While it was hard to find vegan food, the vegan food I did find was some of the best I’ve ever had. I think if I were to go back alone or with a group of other vegans it would be a little bit easier to be able to navigate amazing all vegan places. Ill be excited to let you know all about it when that day comes. Oh and lastly, the Mona Lisa isn’t as small as everyone says it is. 😉

Love & Light

-Gemma