She loved painting watercolors of Paris. So she moved there – when she was 72

By Jeanne Bonner, CNN

(CNN) — When Carol Gillott first glimpsed Paris, she was a 16-year-old Philadelphia girl, following in the footsteps of her older sister who had already visited the City of Light. Seven decades since she arrived in Paris by boat for that short stay as a tourist, she now calls the city home.

But she hasn’t lived in Paris all her life — or even most of her life. Gillott only took the leap to move to Paris full-time at age 72.

For decades following that initial teenage visit, she maintained a long-distance love affair with the French capital, and the French way of life. But she made a career for herself as an illustrator in the US, working mainly in New York, and would visit France several times a year, sometimes attending painting workshops.

She also designed shoes in Italy and wrote an illustrated book about European flea markets. While working in the fashion industry, she was sent to Hong Kong, Taiwan and India.

Paris, however, occupied a permanent corner of her mind so she continued to visit as frequently as she could.

“Everyone said, ‘Why don’t you move to Paris?’” she tells CNN Travel.

In 2006, she started a blog that chronicled her love of Paris and provided a showcase for her watercolors of the city, especially the pastries and confections beloved by locals and tourists alike. The website, called Paris Breakfasts, found an audience, and Gillott was inspired to keep returning to Paris where she could paint what she loved.

She also began selling her artwork through Etsy. Readers embraced the colorful whimsy of her work, which fed an intense fascination with French style on the part of her patrons. Buoyed by the success of the blog and her artwork, she left New York, and moved permanently to Paris.

Now 86, Gillott has no regrets. She lives alone in a tiny apartment on an island in the Seine but she’s anything but alone in a city where her love of art and good living is rewarded with a rich calendar of exhibit openings and food tastings.

“My father would say, ‘You’re going to end up in a garret surrounded by cats,’” she said. “Well, I’ve got the garret.”

‘I was having too much fun’

As a child, and even as a young adult, Gillott was restless. Her parents couldn’t understand why she flitted from one interest to another.

After her teenage visit to Paris with an art group, she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.

She worked as a freelance illustrator and also had stints in the fashion industry on 7th Avenue in New York. But one of her most significant jobs was working as a pharmaceutical illustrator. Her drawings appeared in ads for Advil and Prozac, in addition to appearing on magazine covers about the medical industry for publications such as Time and Newsweek.

On the side, she accepted and sought volunteer gigs that expanded her world culturally. For example, she volunteered as a photographer for the James Beard Foundation, which introduced her to many chefs. There, at the New York nonprofit dedicated to the cooking world, she met French chefs such as Alain Ducasse and Paul Bocuse at special events and dinners.

Those encounters led to artwork commissions and only deepened her connection to Paris.

One commission was for G.H. Mumm, the French Champagne maker. She drew pictures of celebrities drinking Mumm and ultimately wound up drawing labels that were affixed directly onto the bottles.

Life was anything but boring for Gillott in New York. She said she attended Gloria Steinem’s 60th birthday and worked as an assistant to the designer Anne Klein. Plus, she visited Paris multiple times a year, staying in boutique hotels in the Sixth Arrondissement.

“I never married — I forgot,” she said. “I was having too much fun.”

But there were tense moments. In the 1980s, she was shot by a mugger near her apartment in New York’s East Village. She survived; life in New York, however, was taking a toll.

“I found New York becoming ruder and ruder and pushier and pushier,” she said.

Paris breakfasts — and dinners, too

Her visits to Paris continued, and then when she began blogging about her Parisian-inspired artwork, her sideline became a main line. She even exhibited her work at the Alliance Francaise in Washington DC and the Chelsea Arts Club in London.

So in 2012, she decided to come for a trial visit, subletting her apartment in New York. And more or less, she’s been in Paris ever since.

Gillott now lives in what’s called a chambre de bonne, which was originally built as servants’ quarters. Located on the Île Saint-Louis, her apartment overlooks the Seine, and from her window, Gillott can see the Bastille surrounded by classic Parisian rooftops. The environment in this corner of Paris, she says, is village-like.

While Gillott is long past retirement age, she keeps up what many people would consider a full-time job as a blogger. Her cozy, colorful, chatty blog is a stunning mixture of her original artwork and photos she takes out and about in Paris.

Initially, she built a following by drawing pastries and confections, which inspired the blog’s name. She was especially drawn to the beloved French confectioner Ladurée, known for its macarons.

Now she writes marathon posts about anything happening in Paris that tickles her fancy and lends itself to illustration (via photos or watercolors). Lately, that’s included classic French author Colette, beach umbrellas in Normandy and Monet’s paintings.

As one of her readers put it in a blog comment, Gillott has “a wonderful ability to connect all of the Parisian dots.”

She exports the spirit of the blog — and supports herself — by creating artwork that she sells on Etsy, including a letter subscription service that sends small examples of her work to subscribers’ mailboxes around the world.

Some of the more striking items she’s created include an illustrated map of Paris that denotes places associated with Napoleon. There are also personalized, illustrated maps of the best places to buy macarons and ice cream.

Americans — and others — who pine for France find a home for their longing in her work. “The perfect post, Carol,” wrote a blog reader called Diane in Denver as she commented on a visit Gillott made to the seaside town of Le Havre. “Absolument parfait.”

Gillott has also continued to work as a freelance illustrator. One highlight was contributing artwork to a poster advertising a Champagne and pastry trade show. The poster was on display in the Paris Metro for two weeks where tens of thousands of commuters walked by it.

“As an artist, my life is very rich,” she said. “I don’t have a lot of money, But you can be kept busy here if you enjoy food and art.”

‘It’s all about seasonality’

Gillott’s watercolors depict a sensuous life dedicated to everything that’s beautiful about Parisian culture and French food.

Her work looks like something out of a foreign film or a glossy magazine spread. But nothing is idealized. It’s inspired by the French way of life that Gillott has been observing most of her life.

“There are all these food rituals here. Every month, there’s something and it’s a big deal,” she said of life in France. “There’s so much celebration when the cherries come in. People are really excited and there are recipes.”

She says companies, agricultural organizations and tourist boards are constantly staging tastings and contests for the best gallette or the best croissant — plus Paris is a magnet for professional conventions. Someone has to attend celebrations of France’s chocolate industry, for example, and Gillott does just that. As a blogger, Gillott has the time — and the press invite — to attend.

Even though she’s often invited to events featuring Champagne, Gillott doesn’t drink a lot of alcohol, but she adores French food, including the myriad local varieties of cheese.

“Petrossian was especially generous with tastings of flights of caviar,” she recalls of her early blogging days, namechecking the world’s most famous purveyor of caviar.

She knows many people think living in Paris is idyllic. She says it is — and it isn’t. While she says she has a good French accent, she doesn’t consider herself very good at speaking French, which can sometimes cause mix-ups.

But she’s adopted the French perspective on food, and it makes for a wonderful life. Last month, for example, she attended a tomato festival. A few years back, she attended a festival dedicated to hot chocolate and on another occasion, it was a kite festival (which still called for food, glorious food).

“You have to change your way of thinking. It’s all about seasonality.”

Art, architecture and a civics exam

She finds life much cheaper in Paris. She collects Social Security, in addition to the income she makes from the drawings she sells on Etsy. She doesn’t have a mortgage or a car payment. She gets around on foot, metro and bus. And senior discounts reduce costs at the pool where she swims and other places.

She’s also savvy about stocking up on fresh food at outdoor markets that must discard many items each day when business wraps up.

“It’s so cheap,” she said.

And the city is so safe. “I don’t worry about crime.”

She qualifies for a visa called in French the Carte de sejour. And because she’s over 65, she says she doesn’t have to prove language proficiency to obtain the visa, but she does have to sit for a civic exam.

“The French love history,” she said, by way of explanation.

Now she does, too. And architecture. To rent her apartment, she said she was tested on French history, including the name of the architect who designed her building. (When asked if she finds such queries odd, she waves it away saying, “They’re French.”)

“It is absolutely gorgeous living here,” she said. “You are walking along and you look up and you see a relief on a building and it’s wonderful. I just love the architecture here.”

Gillott misses her sister, who lives in Philadelphia, and she misses visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But she gave up her apartment in New York and has no plans to return to the US. Too many tastings to attend in Paris, too many watercolors to paint, too much inspiration as she gazes out at the Seine from her apartment building.

“It’s a beautiful city, even when the weather is grey and raining,” she said.

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