Some thoughts on Paris

Friday, August 27, 2010 Day 58
Today was another recovery day, both from our trip to Reims and from our colds. Roger’s is much better, mine is getting better. Mostly we have forged ahead with our plans despite the colds, but it was quite nice just to take the day off.

Since we did nothing blogworthy today, I thought I would share a bit of a retrospective about our stay in Paris. We will leave Wednesday morning for 10 months in Montpellier, and it is unlikely that we will return to Paris for anything more than catching a plane.

The weather has been delightful – mostly in the 70s during the day, with only a handful of really hot days. If Paris sizzles in the summer, we seem to have missed most of that. We will be grateful not to be in Paris in the winter when it drizzles.

The people have been universally courteous, patient and helpful. They have given us directions, helped us find things in the shops, answered our questions to the best of their ability and our understanding, they have tolerated our very bad French and returned better English. Shopkeepers and vendors greet every customer who walks in the door with “Bonjour, monsieur-dame” or “Bonjour, monsieur et madame,” and they expect to be greeted in return. In the street, on the other hand, no one says “bonjour” or any sort of greeting. Indeed, most Parisians do not meet other people’s eyes, or if they do, they immediately avert them.

We have made mistakes, most of which cost us footsteps more than anything else. As we got better with the maps and the metro, we made fewer and fewer of these errors.

Our charming little apartment has served us well. It has two rooms: a bed-sitting room with a surprisingly comfortable futon which, when opened up to a queen-sized bed, fills almost all of the available space in the room; and a kitchen/dining room, which is about the same size as the other room and which, by European standards, is fairly large. The refrigerator is a bit taller than I am – also large by European standards. There are also a water closet and a salle de bain, which contains the sink, washing machine, the shower and a storage cabinet – all adequate, if smaller than that to which we are accustomed. The apartment is large enough that Roger and I have not run into each other every time we have turned around. We figured out the vagaries of the water heater and had as much hot water as we needed. The same with the cooktop and oven. I have fallen in love with our windows – the are tall, starting about two feet from the floor (just above the radiators) and extending all the way to the top of our 9-foot ceilings. They have marvelous metal shutters of a simple but very utilitarian design which Roger says has been around since the 17th century. The windows have no screens, but none are needed as there are few insects around to enter the rooms.

Paris driving: I have not been behind the wheel of a car since the end of June, so I can only write from the perspective of the pedestrian. Unlike in the U.S., there seems to be little impatience from French drivers. They are courteous and very willing to cede the right-of-way to other cars and pedestrians. The whole mentality here is that of laissez-faire – there is no road rage, seldom do cars honk, and drivers are not flipping the bird and rushing to cut off other drivers. Motorists in the U.S. could learn a few things from the French.