Paris Musings

Take the nice parts of NYC and Boston, make it cleaner, change 80% of the red brick to a white stone, take away the yellow cabs, make the people friendlier, get rid of the exceptionally tall buildings and 90% of the post WWII cheesy architecture, - mix in some Savannah GA and Charleston SC - and then you have Paris.

First thing I noticed, and made me think of NYC, is the ethnic makeup of Paris. Forget your image of "French folk," no, Paris has the look of the US (without the weight problem). Just an observation, not a commentary. A few changes: exchange Hispanics for people of Arab extraction, mix in fewer Jews (touchy subject over here), and all the cabbies here are "indigenous French." Oh, and they smoke. A lot.

Paris has Rome beat by a long shot. Paris is just a more comfortable, cleaner, safer, nicer city. Rome could be Paris, but for now the Italians are not quite up to it. Additionally, you are less likely to get bothered by street-folks - though you have to make it through the Sub-Saharan gauntlet of trinket sellers to get to Versailles, and the North African gauntlet to get to the Eiffel tower, but that is about it - only about 10% of the beggars compared to Rome as well. Even the homeless here are doing fairly well. On our last full day we took a boat ride on the Seine in 60F weather; under a lot of the bridges are semi-permanent camps where the "homeless" live. As we went by, about six were sitting around a table at the end of their shelter playing cards, laughing, enjoying the weather, and drinking wine.

MJ's French helped a lot, but as you may have heard, the French speak more English than you think. The only folks that really couldn't speak English were the waiter we had at the Creperie Chez Imogene (the quote on the wall was "Ne vous fauchez paz, Imogene!" of "Don't get angry, Imogene!" .. I guess someone had issues...Not being French, we don't know what it is all about.) where we had dinner at on Wed, and one person at Picard (an amazing frozen food store, more on that later...) We had all our breakfasts in our appt. and had our lunches on the go. A few of our dinners we had at the appt, but we ate out a few times as well.....though sometimes the girls would rather have been in bed.

We all had high expectations for Paris, and she met them. Very nice visit the way we did it, and we will go again. One thing I wouldn't do though, is EVER go in the summertime. Going when we went in April, it wasn't too crowded or hot. Sure, the trees and flowers were just starting to show, but still.....Paris in summer must just be a nightmare. No wonder the locals leave.

Tooling around Paris, just a couple of observations.

The Paris "riots."
- Give me a break. The French government caved in to their spoiled children a few days prior to showing up, so the closest we came to a no-kidding riot was close to Musee Rodin where we saw one protest started by some 20-somethings in their 100 Euro shoes, good teeth, and 300 Euro coats with something like "The Oppressed Generation" on paper safety-pinned to them. Give me a break. They don't know what oppression is. Anyway, about when they started getting their act together, about 1.5x their number of police showed up in vans ready for business. No worry there....or anywhere in Paris.

As for the French police, we saw a lot more of them than we did in Rome (perhaps why we felt safer). No pictures of them because that is not allowed - for the police's protection; but looking at these multi-ethnic group of young men and women with a professional eye, they are an impressive group. If asked, there is little question Paris would be quite clean of riots. All they need is the right leadership.

France hates America?
- Notsomuch. One of the best Metro stops is Lafayette. Even at restaurants outside the Univ. of Paris, the "olive drab shirts and hats" '68 wannabes drink Diet Coke. There is a little bit of it here and there though. At one store, they had a pillow with an American flag on it, the flag was upside down, and yes, I righted it. Outside The Sorbonne, The Gap didn't make it through the last week's riots in one piece. Funny thing is, I think I say less anti-Americanism in Paris than I did in NYC or in California when I lived there. From the miniature Statue of Liberty to the statue of Lafayette given to France by, as the placard says, American school children, to books for sale with French taking credit for the existence of the USA (fair statement, in fact), to the friendliness of the locals, to immeasurable small things - I think the gap between the French and American people is quite small. The politicians and opinion elite on both sides; that is perhaps another thing.

Speaking of culture clashes - irony of ironies. Some of the actual or 1st generation French of sub-Saharan extraction have adopted the whole American ghetto culture fashion. On the Metro ride home on Tuesday we had the whole bandana-under-NY Yankees hat-baggy hooded sweatshirt-baggy jeans-not enough fiber in the diet look. The whole thing. He didn't quite get it though. Kind of like seeing an American male walking around with a black beret, red neckerchief around the neck and black-and-white striped shirt; the physical look is there, but the pose, movement and personality are just a bit off phase to carry it off. Oh, then again, in Paris I don't think I have seen anyone in a black beret - but you get the concept.

Enough of my poor writing; the question is - what did we do and where did we go? Stay tuned.... (Don't you hate cliff hangers.)