After
I got back from Italy, I started missing my daily afternoon caffè I'd shared with my friends in Pisa. Too hosed to take the luxury of just chatting an hour a day over my drink, but wanting to carry a bit of my Italian life through my last semester at MIT, I began stopping at Coffeehouse 1369 in Central Square several days a week to do my homework after finishing my course at Harvard, along the walk home to MIT. I soon found that I absolutely loved doing my homework in cafés. My productivity was greatly enhanced by the feeling that, even when lost in the depths of some impossibly difficult MIT assignment, I was still a part of the real world. 
Sitting there sipping my coffee in a pleasant ambience, surrounded by the local artists' work displayed on the walls and the lull of various café conversations, and supported in spirit by my fellow students at work, I somehow found it easier to keep school in perspective and to stay much more relaxed and focused.
Now that I've become hooked on cafés, I wanted to find myself a new one to call my own, but that proved far more challenging that expected. The word café is wherein lies all the confusion: you see, café in Paris does not mean café exactly like a Starbucks (of which there are plenty in Paris)
or the cafés in Boston/Cambridge, filled with students and lots of little tables and comfy chairs for working. In Paris, most people want to eat at cafés, and people think work should be left to libraries or bedrooms, which doesn't exactly work for me. I just discovered a website that seems to have been designed by someone who had just my problem. The site, cafes-wifi.com, breaks down Paris by arrondissement and, in total, scores 146 "top wifi cafés" based upon their service, their cost, their safety, how many outlets they have, and the quality of their wifi. This site is proving extremely useful, though still it took a number of tries before I finally found a good café where I managed to get some work done. In the meanwhile, tracking down the cafés whose descriptions sounded good resulted in my exploring several new neighborhoods this week! At last, yesterday I had my first victory! La Fée Verte, literally "The Green Fairy," is a very cute and friendly absinthe café that also sells other kinds of drinks and foods and has a nice little hidden corner with multiple outlets where even real French people can be found hiding out working on their laptops. Somehow they've managed to offer a very American (or un-French, at least) service while keeping the setting very French. The staff has proven quite friendly and the café seems to have a very nice atmosphere. I'm pretty excited about it.
I got back from Italy, I started missing my daily afternoon caffè I'd shared with my friends in Pisa. Too hosed to take the luxury of just chatting an hour a day over my drink, but wanting to carry a bit of my Italian life through my last semester at MIT, I began stopping at Coffeehouse 1369 in Central Square several days a week to do my homework after finishing my course at Harvard, along the walk home to MIT. I soon found that I absolutely loved doing my homework in cafés. My productivity was greatly enhanced by the feeling that, even when lost in the depths of some impossibly difficult MIT assignment, I was still a part of the real world. 
Sitting there sipping my coffee in a pleasant ambience, surrounded by the local artists' work displayed on the walls and the lull of various café conversations, and supported in spirit by my fellow students at work, I somehow found it easier to keep school in perspective and to stay much more relaxed and focused.Now that I've become hooked on cafés, I wanted to find myself a new one to call my own, but that proved far more challenging that expected. The word café is wherein lies all the confusion: you see, café in Paris does not mean café exactly like a Starbucks (of which there are plenty in Paris)
or the cafés in Boston/Cambridge, filled with students and lots of little tables and comfy chairs for working. In Paris, most people want to eat at cafés, and people think work should be left to libraries or bedrooms, which doesn't exactly work for me. I just discovered a website that seems to have been designed by someone who had just my problem. The site, cafes-wifi.com, breaks down Paris by arrondissement and, in total, scores 146 "top wifi cafés" based upon their service, their cost, their safety, how many outlets they have, and the quality of their wifi. This site is proving extremely useful, though still it took a number of tries before I finally found a good café where I managed to get some work done. In the meanwhile, tracking down the cafés whose descriptions sounded good resulted in my exploring several new neighborhoods this week! At last, yesterday I had my first victory! La Fée Verte, literally "The Green Fairy," is a very cute and friendly absinthe café that also sells other kinds of drinks and foods and has a nice little hidden corner with multiple outlets where even real French people can be found hiding out working on their laptops. Somehow they've managed to offer a very American (or un-French, at least) service while keeping the setting very French. The staff has proven quite friendly and the café seems to have a very nice atmosphere. I'm pretty excited about it.
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