Hey ,

I'm having an amazing time in my first few days in Paris, and sending this mid-week again rather than on a Sunday, messing up with schedules and expectations completely, sorry!I'm staying in a fantastic apartment with a balcony I rented on Airbnb, right around the corner from where I used to live 15 years ago, so I've quite literally been walking down memory lane these past few days.  In my particular case that means walking down Rue de Charonne in the 11th arrondissement. It was a pretty cool neighbourhood back then, and it's uber cool now. The area has both changed a lot, and kind of not too much at the same time. Of course global trends have hit: craft microbreweries, small shared plates 'bistronomie' restaurants, natural wine bars, and single dish specialties (e.g. Japanese Kara Age fried chicken joint, Chinese dumplings restaurant, bubble tea stall, etc).I walked down to Bastille market on Sunday morning, one of Paris' largest, and had friends I hadn't seen in a long time over for brunch. We played Spire RPG in the afternoon, a tabletop roleplaying game about desperate revolutionary dark elves trying to overthrow the rule of ruthless high elves. I'd been meaning to try it for a while and I was just in the middle of reading the book before packing it up in my belongings being shipped from Chicago. On Sunday evening I went out for a walk in the area. I literally just walked to the street corner and heard my name called out. It turned out to be a good friend of my brother's I hadn't seen in a long time, he was with a friend, I joined them to catch up over drinks and dinner. I visited an apartment, caught up with my cousin and uncle in the past couple of days after working half the day on organizing stuff for my big birthday bash next week. I'm really happy to be back in Paris and looking forward to finding the right apartment next month, after my holidays.I'll take a newsletter break now and keep in touch again in August!Cheers,WillemPS: I mentioned my cancelled American Airlines flight last week, even better my flight the following day was delayed another 7 hours. I was meant to arrive in Paris last Friday morning and finally got here 31h later on Saturday evening! This guy has a video that is basically everything that happened.

 Weekly Combo Two or three flavours, interesting separately, fascinating together 

I'm keeping it easy with the links this week around, and also because I read a bunch about why my flight and other American Airlines flights were delayed and cancelled, apparently it's been going on for months and spiked last week too. Part of this is due to an ongoing dispute with the maintenance union over American airlines wanting to reduce union maintenance jobs. And it's not the only thing, there are also a number of cancellations due to the airline taking the Boeing 737 MAX off flying, and finally I also found references and estimates to the fact that the airline typically has much more delays and cancellations due to an outdated logistics systems, meaning they take longer than other airlines to recover from any issues affecting air travel schedules. 

I didn't know this: Paris is Airbnb's single largest market and by far. There are apparently around 65,000 listings within Paris, and New York is the 2nd largest market with 50,000 listings. The "sharing economy" means a number of consequences, possibly including less apartments available for people wanting to live in Paris, families, and an increase in people running shady Airbnb listings - basically renting more apartments than is legally permitted and pretend to be living in the apartments that are in fact only rented on the popular platform. It's an interesting read, particularly as I'm sitting in an Airbnb right now. And I began looking at apartments to rent in Paris, costs are just prohibitive, perhaps as they are in all large cities nowadays. I'm probably going to have an interesting time apartment hunting next month!