Boulangerie – Paris, France

As helpful as a smartphone is, they are doubly essential for travel in a foreign land. With guidebook in hand, we plugged the address into the maps application, which routed us to our bakery — about ten minutes of walking. This simple act was painfully cumbersome in the old days.

The wonderful facade of our destination took me aback — boulangerie is a French bakery. I didn’t read the description in the guidebook; I left that up to my wife. I dutifully followed, taking pictures along the way. She may be hankering for those tasty French food, but I was happy just making photographs.

And while this boulangerie might be older than some, there are plenty of other examples of character-filled architecture — something the cities in the United States lack, even in New York. Comparing Paris to Disney World sounds crude and comical, but in the United States, Disney has more details than your average place. This level of authenticity is hard to replicate, even with the big budgets and skill of the Disney Imagineers. This ain’t no Epcot Center; it’s the real thing.

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