Why I Made the Paris in my Pocket Guide (and what’s inside)

From Petite Ile Boulangerie in the 3e

In 2017 I moved back to Paris to start my life over. And that’s no exaggeration, I would go bankrupt later that year and literally start from scratch - as much of a reboot as one can have: new country, new city, new job(s), and a very, very empty bank account. All the while I was vlogging daily on YouTube, sharing the experience as best I could as I stumbled through settling in Paris.

One of the things I love most is exploring new cities. When I travel, I don’t tend to do much research beyond where I want to stay and where the nearest specialty coffee shop is. That’s my starting point - where do I find good coffee? From there, I know I’ll be able to figure out the rest.

I find that, like anywhere you go in the world, the local experience is the most fun. Unfortunately, your average local doesn’t necessarily have the best recommendations. Would you trust your uncle to hook you up with the best cocktail joint in town? (If you would, then you are one lucky neice/nephew)

What you really want is to find a local with similar tastes - for me that means finding a specialty coffee shop, microbrewery taphouse, or natural wine bar to start. The odds that there’s a nerd in there who has similar tastes to me is much higher than just asking a hotel receptionist who’s likely to send me somewhere… less interesting.

With Paris, I had time on my side. As I’d emigrated, I was able to wander at my own pace and investigate anything that looked interesting. I also had the motivation of needing to get out of the house most days to ensure my vlogs didn’t turn into a daily tour of my apartment. Ultimately this meant that I covered a lot of ground and explored Paris relatively quickly.

The final motivator early on was wanting to write. I’ve written a dozen books or so at this point and usually find writing in a coffee shop to be the most energizing - I like being around people, I love coffee, and with the right music in my headphones to drown out most of the noise, I can get a lot done.

From Vague in the 17e

The problem was that, back then, there weren’t very many good coffee shops in Paris. And there were even fewer that would let you write for hours on end. Space is of a premium in Paris and no one wants you wasting it with your laptop and a solitary flat white.

The irony is that your average local cafe has a lot more space, if worse coffee, and is usually very open to letting you sit for hours on end. So I had to search far and wide not only to find every coffee shop in Paris, but to see if they would let me write.

This search was featured pretty heavily in my daily vlog in 2017-2018 as so much of my movement across the city was in search of a place to write. And so many of my complaints came from being kicked out of some coffee shop right as I got in the flow. Viewers started asking, where WAS that coffee shop? And where was that place you found for lunch right after?

Those questions just kept stacking up.

My first response was just… to respond. My comments section wasn’t overwhelming and I used to respond to every comment every day - it made my vlog feel more like an ongoing conversation with my audience and is one of the things I miss most about daily vlogging. But it also got tiring, answering the same questions over and over when I was trying to find something new at the same time. Then someone asked if I had a guide they could buy.

That seemed like a good idea. In reality, it was an obvious one.

The first iteration of my guide was a good old-fashioned PDF that I wrote front to back myself and published in 2018. I put every piece of advice on visiting Paris I could think of into topical articles that I placed at the front of the guide - everything from where to stay in Paris to how to use the metro, how to avoid scams and pickpockets, and even whether or not you’re supposed to tip in Paris (spoiler: no, but that’s getting complicated with credit card machines now).

I then bundled all my recommendations for coffee, food, wine, and even little notes on the major monuments by arrondissement. So if you wanted to see what was going on in the 1st arrondissement of Paris or the 19th, all you had to do was check that section and see what I’d discovered and why I loved it.

In that first year I had discovered over a hundred places to eat and drink, many of them on a street food budget as I didn’t exactly have a lot of money to throw around. But I love food, and I love exploring, so I wasn’t about to stop.

An evolution of Jay Swanson/Paris in my Pocket guide covers from 2018 to 2023

I would update the PDF every year, deleting places that had gone out of business (or that I didn’t like anymore for one reason or another), and adding new places that I’d found. This got more challenging as I found more and more places to recommend. PDFs are cumbersome. Updating it took a good month of effort every year, and even with subsequent redesigns it never felt quite as premium as I wanted it to.

In 2022 I started talking with my friend Jeff Beltran about converting it into a web app. We’d always wanted to build something together and we realized that a lot of our bigger dreams and goals could be started by turning my guide into an online web app. It could add rich features like interactive maps, itineraries, and audio tours, as well as organize the articles I’d written into something more easily accessible and consumable.

And so that’s what we did. It took a lot longer to build than we expected (which, it turns out, is exactly how web and app development always works), but in 2023 we were able to switch from a PDF to an online interactive guide at parisinmypocket.com. 

It now has hundreds of recommendations that I have personally tried and loved for one reason or another (some of them are terrible in every category except one that makes it worth it - imagine a dive bar with crap service and average drinks but a phenomenal view and neighborhood vibe). It is very much Paris off-the-beaten-path, with lots of hidden gems and authentic recommendations close to that path so you can still take advantage of all the classic elements of a visit to Paris without sacrificing a single meal along the way. And many more in parts of Paris you might otherwise never discover.

I’m at that place now where most native-born Parisians will say I know the city better than they do. I still feel like there’s always more to explore.

With the online version we’re now able to keep it updated on the fly, meaning that we can add new restaurants as we find them, remove old ones as they close, and keep your visit as up-to-date and local as possible. My goal, personally, is that Paris in my Pocket serves as not only a foundational element to any visitor’s time in Paris, but a touchpoint for Parisians who want to get out and find something new and tasty in their own city. I want to make sure to support local businesses and get visitors out of the touristy corridors.

I hope that if you buy it, you find it incredibly useful. Seeing as you get lifetime access, you’ll never miss out. More than that, I hope it helps you come to love Paris as much as I do.

You can get started for free with this blog post over on Paris in my Pocket about some of our favorite hidden parks - it is picnic season as I write this after all.