I arrived in Paris to join one of the loves of my life, a French actress whose classic beauty is a mix of Sophia Loren’s cheekbone sultriness and Audrey Hepburn’s waifish charm. My friend was raised in the forest but escaped to Paris when she was thirteen years old to pursue drama classes and begin her life as an artist and international girl of mystery.

She has spent time in New York and for a moment even wanted to move there. But after her recent life epiphanies and a trip to an obscure meditation retreat in Egypt, she says frankly, “It has nothing for me, New York. C’est si décadent, et pas dans une bonne façon.” It’s so decadent, and not in a good way. Manhattan is given to a rather sinister seeking out of distraction.

There is a decadence about Paris as well, with its snobbish and obsessive approach to everything from the proper poulet to the tying of scarves. But Parisian decadence seems more intuitive and natural, stemming from centuries of well-meaning traditions.

My French Goddess (pictured above) said of Paris, “It is a city of so much history, everywhere you go. The buildings are much older. New York is so young in comparison, and it feels as though it is desperately trying to compensate for a lack of history.”

Maybe this is what gives Manhattan its frenetic and destabilizing ambiance. In Paris there are medieval ghosts occupying the flats, but in New York there are investment bankers and upwardly mobile fashionistas ogling the streets.

Paris versus Manhattan: the difference between a glass of wine everyday at lunch and a bevy of vodka shots every end-of-week night. One seems intuitively wrong.

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