You may have heard that Paris has been besieged by heatwaves (“canicules,” as the French call them) during the summer months in recent years. This year has been particularly scorching, with the late June heatwave hitting a record-setting 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

In mid-June, this Tintin meme came across my feed…

“Two heatwaves in one month, what a summer, huh?”
“It’s still spring, captain.”

And Paris is not a city designed for high temperatures.

Fortunately my apartment has managed to stay relatively cool. I have no A/C, but I also have no windows with southern exposure — just east and north. So as long as I have a fan spinning in each room, it works pretty well for the first week of a heatwave.

My friend Sara was visiting from San Francisco during the late June heatwave. Our initial strategy was to go to museums — first the Louis Vuitton Foundation for the Alexander Calder Exhibition and then the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection for whatever it was they were showing — because museums have AIR CONDITIONING.

But aside from getting exposed to some amazing art, after you get to the museum and then travel back from the museum, you’re really no better off than when you started.

So the next day we just hung out at the apartment. Fortunately, Sara is a veteran of the Burning Man Festival, so she is very well versed in the ways to keep cool without air conditioning, even in extreme temperatures. These might have included a series of gin tonics and Evian aerosol misters to augment the effect of the hand fans.

Sara also scheduled visits to three champagne houses during her visit. Only 45 minutes by train from Paris, these are easily accessible. The first, at Taittinger, had me making plans for the next canicule. It goes like this:
1. Book a tour
2. Get myself “lost” in the caves where the temperature is a lovely 55 or 60 degrees
3. “Survive” just drinking champagne for three or four days until the heatwave passes
4. Find my way back to the surface, making excuses about how I just “got lost”

Sara also scheduled visits to three champagne houses during her visit. Only 45 minutes by train from Paris, these are easily accessible. The first, at Taittinger, had me making plans for the next canicule. It goes like this:

1. Book a tour
2. Get myself “lost” in the caves where the temperature is a lovely 55 or 60 degrees
3. “Survive” just drinking champagne for three or four days until the heatwave passes
4. Find my way back to the surface, mumbling semi-plausible excuses about how I just “got lost”

During a heatwave, you also find other ways to cope. One of them is by not cooking. So for instance gazpacho is AMAZING! Which you can make yourself or find readily available at the regular or organic supermarkets here. Not the French-inspired vichyssoise that you might expect, but gazpacho. Because apparently I’m not the first one in Paris to think that heatwave + gazpacho is an amazing combination.

Also, oysters! Raw. On the halfshell. And no that old thing about months with R doesn’t matter. Oysters are perfect for a summer heatwave. Ive had them several times this summer and they have been delicious. Even if not quite as good as the ones in Seattle. Just saying.

Also, during the summer, the French have this thing they call “rosé piscine.” Literally that’s “swimming pool rosé,” meaning “rosé that you drink while lounging around the pool,” and amounts to “rosé wine with ice cubes in it.” Both to cool it down and to water it down.

And so I was having dinner with a friend at a little Italian place not too far from my apartment. It was reasonably hot and the place had no air conditioning. Normal. I ended up ordering a glass of red with my meal. And then I noticed that the French woman at the next table asked for ice cubes with her red. Which I’d never heard of before. I’d thought it was just not done. Red wine and ice cubes. But it was true that the red wine was not exactly at cellar temperature, was decidedly warm, so ice cubes would help bring it to the proper temperature, even if they diluted it a bit.

So I asked for ice cubes as well, though they never did bring them. But I learned an important lesson. During a canicule, ice cubes are always in order.

During one of the canicules, as an emergency measure, the City of Paris decided to open up the entirety of the Canal Saint-Martin for swimming, though they posted gendarmes on the bridges to keep people (meaning mainly daredevil teenaged boys) from jumping off them. It looked like a lot of fun even if in the end I opted not to join them.

Hope you’re staying reasonably cool wherever you are!