Amazon stocks a lot of “French pharmacy” products — but it’s quite a weird assortment, so I thought I’d dig in and see what’s good, what’s weird, and what’s a super good buy. A trip to Paris will definitely still be a better way to do a proper French pharmacy haul — and Amazon has had very many complaints about poor quality products (or outright fakes). Many of the brands below operate their own online US shopping sites, so you can go straight to the source, if you prefer. As has also been widely reported, there seems to be some sort of advantage for Amazon in presenting search results that are at best disorganized and at worst chaotic — it really took a minute to sort through what was sponsored and what was not, and to simply distinguish brands that were, in fact, French — from the decidedly not-French brands like Tatcha and Murad, which also showed up in my results. All those caveats aside, sometimes you just want to try something new, and get it with …

Paris is a city of immense beauty, but also immense, if occasional, complication. These are my best Paris travel hacks for navigating the city. 1. I feel safe here, but property crime is real. Within the city limits, I’ve never felt unsafe in Paris — not even walking home solo at 2 a.m. I don’t know anyone who’s been the victim of a violent crime. I feel physically safer in Paris than in the other big cities where I’ve lived — New York, San Francisco, London, and Rio — and I’ve never walked into a mall here looking for the exits in case some lunatic starts shooting up the food court. That said — that said! — property crime here is real. Pickpocketing is real. I feel like relative to NY and SF, you’re less likely to get your bag back if you leave it in a restaurant. And — pièce de résistance — earlier this summer a thief came through a window into my apartment and swiped my laptop. Bizarrely, parallel-ly, I feel like …

I didn’t meet Francois in my building, like Emily met Gabriel, her not-single chef: I met Francois, my not-single restaurateur, in an even cuter way: His parents sold me a vintage desk lamp at a garage sale. The desk lamp was adorable, and his parents, equally so. Along with the lamp, they gave me a card for their son’s restaurant, which happened to be a 10-minute walk from my apartment. “Stop by!” they said, in their perfect English. “Talk to Francois!” I did. He looked not like Lucas Bravo but like Eddie Redmayne, which for me, was a win. I told him to thank his parents for the lamp. He gave me a basket of something like cheese biscuits(?). He told me to let him know if I had any problems with the lamp — so when it stopped working a week later, I emailed him. This time, instead of meeting at the restaurant, we met at the apartment above his restaurant. I looked for any signs of a partner — he was just moving …