Thierry Picot profile

Thierry Picot is a franco-américain who took early retirement from academia, where he taught medieval history and Romance linguistics, to devote himself to his much younger wife and to travel in both the United States and France. He brings to Bonjour Paris his broad knowledge of many parts of both countries, an enthusiasm for wine, the arts, architecture, eating well, and living as well as possible without apparent extravagance, which he claims has become more and more difficult because the good life is being sold at a higher and higher rate everywhere in the world. “The trick,” he says, “is to believe that the majority is wrong, at least most of the time, to be a contrarian.” So he goes to Provence and Cape Cod in the winter, when the weather is not the best, but when you can see such places as they really are—“and they are very beautiful on the starkest December day.” Or to go to Paris in August when everything is not closed, and never was, despite everything you may have heard, and when the movies and the stores are not overrun, but avoid the museums because of the tourists. The same applies to northern New England, when you can’t ski, but the weather is lovely and it’s a pleasure to hike and swim, and to New Mexico, when it is hot, but you can go to the opera at Santa Fe. He will be reviewing books and various Paris destinations for Bonjour Paris.