Paris in the Springtime: How to Avoid Everyone

This is how I like my outdoor terraces: deserted, tourist-free and preferably childless (sorry parents but screaming kids are just not part of my vision for an al fresco paradise). But since we’re coming out of what seems like the longest winter yet, at the first hint of sun, you can bet everyone and their…

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A Tale of Two Cities & Beyond with MessyNessyChic in 2018

In 2018, MessyNessyChic became a tale of two cities. We’ll always have Paris, but now we have New York too. In preparation for Don’t Be a Tourist in New York, book number 2 (touching down in 2019), this year our rabbit hole led us across the pond in search of a sleepless city’s secrets. Armed with a…

The Rotting Rothschild Mansion in Paris

The Rothschilds are known as one of the greatest European banking dynasties ever established, amassing the largest private fortune in modern history. The family is less well-known for anything to do with squalor, ruin or decay. But just 5 miles from the Notre-Dame, beyond the lush green lawn of the Edmond de Rothschild park, standing defiantly behind a thick wall of…

Reviving the Real-Life “Middle Earth” Maps in a Secret Paris Museum

Maps and Miniatures — these are a few of my favourite things (along with Paris and all its secret places, of course). But you might be wondering what secrets I could possibly find at one of the most recognisable landmarks in Paris, Les Invalides? So big you can’t miss it, built four centuries ago for the invalids…

Paris Has a Brutal(ist) Side

Love it or hate it, brutalist architecture has an unavoidable presence in every major metropolis– even Paris. In fact, the French capital is something of a haven for futurist concrete architecture. Brutalist boomed here during the 60s and 70s in response to Modernism’s utopian vision, and after Haussmann, came superstar architects like Le Corbusier and an…

Our Top 5 Paris Obsessions for La Rentrée

Paris is back in full swing for la rentrée, the annual ritual of Frenchies returning from their god-given right to a long summer holiday and starting a fresh. And that goes for us too here at the MessyNessyChic HQ. This week we’ve been on the hunt for new hidden gems and stuff to wow and inspire us…

Last Night, I Found Heaven in Paris

I don’t usually do this– blog on the weekends that is– but I had an experience last night that I just had to share with you as soon as I stretched out of bed this morning. It feels like a dream now, but I’ll try to piece it together for you. I was told to find the Villa Mont…

Don’t be a Tourist in Paris: Now available as an eBook!

Okay, you asked for it. With a wave of my baguette magique– why yes, that is indeed how you say “magic wand” in French– Don’t Be a Tourist in Paris THE eBOOK is here! On the one year anniversary since the release of the first print edition, I finally took the leap from the bookshelf to your…

Conical Paris Rooftops & other Unusual Parisian Abodes For Sale

It’s Bastille Day in France this weekend, so I thought, what better a time for you to be daydreaming about moving to Paris. I haven’t done this for a while– that is, browse real estate listings for apartments I can’t afford, but I’d forgotten how much fun it is to play Goldilocks in Paris. So…

200 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Go Down to the Basement in Paris

Underneath the product aisles of a well-known Monoprix supermarket branch in central Paris, where I’ve often popped into myself to pick up a bottle of wine and some olives before attending parties nearby, the skeletons of up to 200 lost souls have been discovered buried in a mass grave. For some of us reading of course, this may very…