You Might Also Like: Wayfinder: Life-Changing Travel

**Daniel Scheffler** (0:08)
Some places take time to invite you in. And then there's Paris, France. A city that lives and breathes with spirit and romance, captivating your senses from the minute your feet hit the pavement. Like many popular destinations, we think we understand it. But what happens when we stay curious long enough to look beyond the obvious and uncover the lesser known parts of the city that really bring it to life?
This is Wayfinder, Life-Changing Travel.
This podcast goes beyond the guidebooks into the heart and soul of real life travelers as they journey around the world. I'm your host, Daniel Scheffler. Today, I'm joined by author, television host, and food expert, Antoni Porowski. Together, we'll wander through the streets of Paris, from childhood memories beneath the Eiffel Tower, to hidden neighborhoods, memorable stays, unforgettable meals, and the many ways Paris has continued to evolve and surprise him throughout his life.

**Antoni Porowski** (1:54)
I was born in Montreal and spent most of my life there, except for a few years in West Virginia. I genuinely thought I was going to spend my entire life in Montreal. I loved it so much. I had so many happy memories, but I'm definitely the type of person that wherever I'm at in life, whether it's personally, professionally, in a relationship, with friendships, I'm fully committed to where I am at that point, and I can never see the possibility of anything else. Fast forward a few years, I moved to New York after getting my undergrad in psychology. I always wanted to be an actor, and I was thinking, I'll be in New York for a couple of years, I'll get this certificate at this conservatory, and then I'm probably going to move back and be a wildly successful actor working for Montreal. All of that changed the second day I was in New York, and I stepped foot on the subway.
In Montreal, you have to understand it's a perfect tic-tac-toe that is color-coded, and suddenly in New York, there's screeching noises, there's voices through the mic that are muffled, and suddenly it's changing tracks, it's violently confusing, and I decided I need to understand how this works. There was something about New York where I was just like, there's something about this city, I'm going to do whatever I can to always make this my primary home. And that's kind of why I've been there for over 15 years. And now I'm in an area called Box County, which is right outside of New York.
And this is where I'm spending more and more of my days.

**Daniel Scheffler** (3:23)
Is this countryside living new or you've always wanted to be there?

**Antoni Porowski** (3:28)
It's so funny you bring that up. I woke up this morning and I was having coffee with my partner.
And we had this conversation.

**Daniel Scheffler** (3:36)
Interesting.

**Antoni Porowski** (3:37)
He's from Traverse City, Michigan. And so he was raised tapping his own maple trees, hunting his own deer, taking them apart, picking cherries. He is crunchy as it gets. When I was looking for this place, I wanted to cosplay as a farmer. He wants to be a farmer. And so it's been interesting having those conversations and looking at what our lives are going to be like over the next year. Because I think coming here into this structure that's been around since the 1700s and has so much history, so much land, I realized, oh, we're not the owners. Like this place has been around so much longer than us, and it's going to exist far after we're gone. And so it's like, we're here to protect this land. Like we're stewards. This isn't just a house, it's a place that we're meant to protect. Which for me is like to get outside of my own head and try to control things that I can't, and to tend to something that is bigger than I am.
There's something really beautiful in that. That's a little jarring and a little new, but it's spiritual.

**Daniel Scheffler** (4:36)
Born in Montreal and now a long-time New Yorker, Antoni is no stranger to city life. But Paris has occupied a unique place in his imagination since he was a child, a city he's returned to again and again, always discovering something new.

**Antoni Porowski** (4:55)
When I went to Paris for the first time, I was five years old, and we stayed with family friends close to the Eiffel Tower, and they didn't have a bed for me, and so I had to sleep in a baby's crib, because it was an old baby crib, and it felt a little demoralizing while all the adults had real beds, and I was meant to go up the Eiffel Tower, but the elevator that day was broken and I didn't get to go, and I cried all night. So that's my earliest Paris story. But my first trip to Paris as more of a grown up was with my partner at the time, and I was waiting tables, working as a personal assistant, basically living off of every paycheck like many New Yorkers do when we first hit the ground. And so it was a big deal. I had to save up for a couple of months, couldn't stay at hotels that I necessarily would like to, but got a B&B in Saint-Germain, which ended up being perfect because it was literally like Aladdin's little lair where it was a little studio with a massive window looking outside. Like it was so poetic. It was just almost like, this is too much. This is too beautiful and perfect with books everywhere. And I think every moment was so precious because I was there for maybe four or five days.