My wife and I just returned from a long vacation, where we spent 3 nights in London and 5 nights in Paris. The point of the trip, really, was to go to Paris, but we had an errand to run in London (long story), so we decided to tack that on to the beginning of the trip. If we had it to do all over again, we’d have done it in reverse, spending 5 nights in London and only 3 in Paris.
Now I’ve always heard that there are two kinds of people: people who love Paris, and people who hate it. As it turns out, my wife and I fall into neither of those categories. Paris was okay, but we didn’t love it. Since it’s a favorite city of several of my close friends, and even came recommended by some Brits I know, I expected to like it a lot more than I did. It got me to wondering why I didn’t love it. I have some thoughts on this:
- Personal space: Parisians have absolutely no sense of it. When walking through crowds, or even down not-so-crowded streets, they make no effort whatsoever to avoid bumping in to one another. And they don’t generally apologize after they’ve bumped into you. I had several Brits tell me that “Paris would be great if it weren’t for the Parisians,” and I’m pretty sure this is what they were talking about. (If you engaged a Parisian in one-on-one conversation, they were generally quite affable.) Also, in cafes, they pack ‘em in like sardines. It’s not like I’m crowd averse or have a strong distaste for close quarters — I loved Mexico City, for the love of Pete!
- The language barrier: For me, one of the most edifying parts of any travel experience is meeting the locals and chatting them up. But in Paris, not speaking French severely limits the pool of people you can engage. Since I don’t speak any French, I never really got any local perspective at all, given that I couldn’t easily chat up the average Joe/Jane. (Jaqueline/Gille?)
- I don’t “get” art: There are some people — lots of them, I suppose — who could spend an entire day getting lost in an art museum. I’m not that guy. After about half an hour, all the paintings start to blend together. After an hour, I’m totally arted out. Though I must admit that even after a long day and too much art, L’Origine du Monde, on display at Musee d’Orsay, will definitely get your attention. (Side note: the Musee d’Orsay is worth the price of admission even for the non-art-lover, just to see the building itself.) Anyway, art isn’t our thing, and the attractions in Paris are very much geared toward art lovers. (And then I come home to discover that my blog host has embraced “Impressionism, bitches.” *sigh*)
- The food scene: As most regular readers know, I’m something of a foodie, and checking out the Paris food scene was a big part of why I wanted to go. But I found the food scene in Paris to be tremendously disappointing. For the most part, we found two kinds of places: ones that were so tremendously expensive as to be inaccessible, and ones that were so popular that you couldn’t get near them. In between them, you’d find a lot of very overpriced, very mediocre food. That’s not to say that French food has nothing to recommend it. When it’s good, it’s very, very good, and the bread is everything you’ve heard and more. The hot dog I had from a little cart near the Eiffel Tower was great. But as for more upscale meals, good ones are very hard to find, and even harder to find affordably. (If you’re going, I can recommend a couple of the good finds we stumbled upon.)
- Speaking of expensive, the weak dollar: France is expensive as it is, but the dollar’s present weakness against the Euro ($1 = 0.67€ while we were there) magnifies that considerably. To give you an easy example of this, a 500ml bottle of a soft drink (or bottled water) typically cost between 2€50 and 3€80, or from $3.73 to $5.67 after you factor in the exchange rate. Start translating this to 25€ main courses or 35€ prix fixe menus, and you start to get the point. What’s already expensive becomes even more so.
- No bar culture: Paris, it seems, doesn’t have any bars, or if it does, I certainly didn’t encounter them. And I’m not talking about a place to go tie one on (though I’m certainly not above doing that). I’m talking about a place to meet friends for a drink before or after dinner, for example. In a restaurant here, it’s not uncommon to grab a drink at the bar before having a seat. Most restaurants in Paris, though they served alcohol, had no bar area at all. And as I said, other than a couple of British pubs — it seemed wrong to go to a British pub in Paris — there didn’t seem to be any dedicated bars. The hotels, including ours, had bars, but they were obscenely expensive (the cheapest glass of wine was 8€, and it was probably only 2/3 the size of a US glass of wine), and few people patronized them.
- Urine: I used to think that New Orleans smelled like urine. After Paris, I owe the Big Easy a Big Apology.
- Body odor: What you’ve heard about this is true. Not much to say about it.
- Aggressive panhandlers/street vendors: They were everywhere, it seemed, and they were constantly approaching you. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting one. Even where police presence was pervasive (which was everywhere, given the recent much-ado-about-nothing terror alerts), they were not dissuaded. Apparently, it’s just tolerated there. I don’t have a big problem with panhandlers or street vendors when they’re not so in-your-face, but those in Paris were among the worst I’ve encountered. (Graffiti, it seems, is also tolerated, as Orange Mound has less of it than Paris does.)
Wow, looking back on that list, you’d think I hated Paris, or that I had a terrible time there. I really didn’t. I liked it okay, I just didn’t love it. Everything I’ve listed is little more than a nit, but a bunch of them collectively added up to me having a so-so opinion of the city. I don’t regret going, but I can’t say I’m in any hurry to go back.
UPDATE: I noticed today that the last sentence was somehow truncated.
leanleft
Kevin
tgirsch
Kevin T. Keith
Judd
Dude, that is fucked up.
I was intensely jealous of you being in Paris. Now I’m jealous, angry, and resentful. Next time, just send me your ticket.
As for the above:
#1: Part of the charm. The trick is to put yourself in the path of attractive people. In Paris, it’s easy.
#2 & #3: Whose fault are these? As for the language thing, Parisians are sniffy about it, but they unbend a lot if you make even the slightest effort; learn a little, and dive in! Regarding art, there’s no excuse.
#4: The expense bit is all too true. But there’s lots of good out-of-the-way stuff. Learn some French food terminology and dive into the back-street bistros. There’s great food everywhere!
#5: Cyclical, but, yeah, Paris is expensive any way you slice it. There are ways to cut prices, though, and in some cases they make the city even more fun! Some of the best hotel deals are in the old section of the Marais district, which is one of the most interesting places to stay; see above about cheap food.
#6: Are you fucking crazy? Paris is filled with bars and nightclubs! And a cool thing about bars and coffee shops in Paris is that you are allowed to keep your table for as long as you want, no matter how little you spend, and they are legally required to refill your drink once an hour! Paris is a dream for cafe culture. You must have been looking in the wrong places (though I can’t imagine how that’s possible).
#7 & #8: Um, yeah.
#9: You have to just be aggressive. It’s of a piece with #1.
Really, I’m sorry you didn’t have a better time there. Paris is really magical. You have to take it on its own terms, but that’s the whole deal with traveling. At least it’s not another cookie-cutter city drowning in imported US culture. God, I wish I was back there!
Oh, and, welcome back!
I hope you had a good time anyway.
#3: Whose fault are these? … Regarding art, there’s no excuse.
I have to agree with this as stated, but almost certainly not as intended. There really is no excuse for “art” to be uninteresting.
If you have to be told what the artist meant in order to know what the art means, the artist is doing it wrong, and that seems to be pretty much the default for most art.
Civil engineering, on the other hand, tends be incredibly beautiful and rarely put on display. It’s nice to hear that d’Orsay succeeds at this.
KTK:
I should point out that we did take the trouble to learn basic French phrases, and we used them. We never simply assumed someone spoke English, and we always initially addressed them in [terrible] French. But being able to exchange basic pleasantries or to ask simple questions is no substitute for actually being able to have a conversation — something I can’t really even do in Spanish, a language in which I’m far more proficient.
As to #3, I don’t see how it’s anyone’s “fault” one way or the other. It’s about personality and taste, not about effort. Could digg rightly say that it’s “our fault” that we don’t generally care for rap/hip-hop? Some people aren’t the slightest bit interested in history musuems, but we eat those up. We’ve just never had that much interest in art, specifically hall after hall of paintings. I can appreciate the effort and skill that went into it without it really being my “thing,” or going out of my way to see it.
Regarding #4, even the back-street bistros were quite expensive, at least if you stayed in those areas easily accessible by subway and walking, as we did. The best meal we had was at one such place, and while expensive, it was excellent. We just allowed the woman who was running the place to pick everything out for us, and we were fortunate enough to be there when game was in season.
On #5, the hotel is the only reason we didn’t bankrupt ourselves on the trip. I was able to cash in my chips from years of past business travel to get the hotel in Paris for almost nothing.
#6: I think part of our problem was that at least where we were, bars were not obviously marked — friends of mine who love Paris tell me that this is a new trend that’s taking over, with the best bars being unmarked, “secret” locations — and we’re not really nightclub people, though I don’t recall seeing too many of those, either. There was a great jazz club right next door to our hotel, but that was about it. Another part of the problem is that we were so busy getting lost in the city during the day, that we generally didn’t stay out very late at night. And whatever night life scene there is in Paris doesn’t seem to start until at least 11 PM.
But there’s an obvious piece of anecdotal evidence to demonstrate my point here. Even the fucking airport didn’t have a bar. There were a couple of self-service places where you could walk up to a 7-11 style fridge and grab a can of beer or a small bottle of wine (at exorbitant prices), but no actual bar. Nothing to “belly up to,” as it were.
And perhaps that’s part of our disconnect here. When I’m out at a bar with friends, we almost never get a table. We sit or stand at the bar itself, because this invites conversation with other people/groups (whereas, in most cultures, anyway, sitting at a table says “leave us to ourselves”). But most places we found had no bar at all. And they were small enough that I would have felt pretty shitty hoarding one of their tables. Sitting and people watching has its place, of course, but it’s no way of getting to know the locals.
#7 and #8 wouldn’t have bothered me quite so much if it hadn’t been for all the other stuff. Though it does surprise me that neither of these was a problem in Mexico City, a city I love, and one that gets nowhere near the gushing praise that Paris gets. (It, too, is littered with art museums, as well as street art, but it also has lots other types of museums that are more in line with our interests.)
On #9, we’re good at being aggressive, but it gets annoying, especially when the same people keep bugging you again and again no matter how many times or how strongly you rebuke them.
On the flip side, of course, we absolutely adored London, a city for which we really had no expectations. Well, that’s not true. I think I probably expected it to be stuffy and stodgy, and nothing could have been further from the truth. (And I must admit, I had “Rule Britannia” stuck in my head the whole time I was there.)
Somewhat fittingly, I came in 2nd (lost a tiebreaker) in a bar trivia night last week because I flip flopped Paris and London as the answers to a set of questions in the first round. This anecdote blends lots of parts of your post.
But, regarding the hip hop comment – I think the analogy is a bit broken. Hip hop is a genre of music (music being a “class” of art, but let’s ignore that because you clearly didn’t mean “art” that broadly). Your expressed meh-ness re: art would be like an expressed meh-ness of music, not of one genre thereof.
That said, I’m not a huge art person either, at least in terms of going to a museum and getting lost for the day. I have my artists and schools that I like and all, but it’s fairly limited to be honest. Expand the definition a bit more liberally to include the thousands of flicks of NYC graffiti, subway and otherwise, mostly illegal, I have and get totally lose a day in, then I guess the equation changes. But, again, seeing a Picasso, for example, I doubt would do jack shit for me. Sorry.
Now, can you blame me for that? I dunno. I think what it comes down to is this – if you can’t find something you like within a large enough genre, that’s kinda your fault. I don’t have to love the entire MoMA, but I really like Kadinsky and still drunkenly complain why no rapper has nicknamed himself MC Escher. So, to me, I think that’s enough. If you have an open mind you will find some collection of things you like, and if you don’t, that’s kinda your “fault”.
I feel the same way with hip hop to be honest. If you can’t find rap artists and rap music that you like – especially, if you’re on the left side of the political spectrum and appreciate the nuances of bending language – then yes, that is kinda your “fault” in either a passive or active way. Either nobody showed you a wide enough sampling of the art (which, in relation to hip hop, I can totally buy), or you didn’t do anything to seek it out, or your tastes are prejudiced in a very unfortunate way to precludes from enjoying many great works that speak quite eloquently and authentically to many of your own stated political sensibilities and linguistic interests. Sometimes, I’ll listen to something and literally think to myself, “how could anybody not appreciate what is going on here?” And, when I say that, I am thinking not necessarily directly of TG, Kev, and KTK, but definitely people like you guys. For thoose of you who may be familiar with my uncle, it took him a while, but he’s largely come around on this.
Point taken on the broken analogy and my use of the term “art.” I’m more specifically referring to art of the sort one would find in an art musuem, which generally winds up being almost exclusively two-dimensional art like paintings. I’m fine with sculpture, and there are definitely even paintings I like a great deal. I’m just highly unlikely to enjoy myself walking through a building with hall after hall of paintings, looking for that relatively few things out of the hundreds on display that in some way resonate with me.
But in an even broader sense, I know people who are “meh” on music in general (similarly to the way I’m “meh” on static, two-dimensional visual art in general).
WRT rap, I don’t consider myself a fan, but I don’t dislike all of it, and I even own a few N.W.A. CDs. And “The Jungle” by Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five is a brilliant piece of social commentary.
Like I said, I hear ya. And, I probably don’t enjoy art museums, as a monolith, any more than you do.
I also kinda feel like if you enjoyed things like The Message or Straight out of Compton, then you could actually be a rap fan if there was somebody guiding you towards more stuff like that. The arc of the commercially viable form of the music shifted and it became pretty difficult to find cogent social commentary (as over or undertone) with above average production, and a sense of somewhat expanded musicality. So, you’re not going to stumble upon artists in that tradition by simply surfing the radio.
In some senses that’s where I’m at with two-dimensional painting art. I like some, but not enough to compel me to engage in the corresponding intellectual pursuit to the degree necessary for me to be able to seek out so much of the stuff that I would/should like on my own.
To be fair, I probably don’t appreciate NWA on the same level you do. I just thought it was funny, in an over-the-top racist, misogynist sort of way. cf., my old blog post on music appreciation, and my generally superficial approach thereto.
QFT. Moreover, this is what I mean by saying that it’s the fault of art, or rather the art world. Painting is certainly the worst culprit, but there are several art forms where the makers and purveyors simply assume that they’ve got the best thing since sliced bread, so why should they give the viewer a reason to actually care?
Interesting, Dan. We agree when we don’t even try to.
I actually made that comment more to say that with the right “mentor” I probably could actually grow my apprecation of this medium significantly, but that my current level of interest isn’t great enough to motivate me to become knowledgable enough to act as my own mentor.
But, thinking about it differently, your interpretation could work too. If the art world did more to make marginal consumers aware of what’s going on within it, then more of us would become more engaged and chronic consumers.
…Of course, this is a slippery slope scenario, as the last thing I want is for artists to attempt to cater to me. I’d rather you do you on your own terms and leave it up to me to decide how I feel about it. The thing you (or your industry) does have to do though is promote your work, otherwise I don’t know it exists. And, that’s my main problem – the work doesn’t need to be changed, I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff out there that I’d like. I just don’t know it exists. Or actually I presume it does, but I don’t know where to find it and I’m not willing to put in much effort.
No matter what though, I don’t think a huge appreciation of painting in me. But, photography, sculpture, pencil drawing, I could definitely really like a lot of that stuff, but something either in the industry or a social dynamic in my life would probably have to change in order for me to really awaken such potential interests.
Yeah, I’ve playing fast and loose with the distinction between artists and “the art industry”, but really, I should be directing my complaint almost entirely at educators, specifically those who are tasking with teaching why anyone should give a fuck, which really brings us back to an entirely different thread.
Language barrier? What are you talking about, Willis? Everyone in western Europe speaks English. With the French, all you have to do is make even the most miserable attempt at speaking their language and they’ll switch to English. All we could manage was “bon soir,” and “ne compren pas francais, parles vous engles?” and everything was bon.
The vagrants are annoying. Our french post-doc in the lab trained me to say “don’t touch me,” and “f*** off” in French. I actually had to use those phrases over there – once.
Sorry you didn’t love it. I can see what you’re saying about there being two kinds of people, though.
Paris isn’t a good tourist city, it’s a good city for art and hanging out if you’re into seeking out the cultural adventure. It’s great if you’re there just to be in Paris, not to see the Lourve, but most people go for the attractions, so it’s kind of a catch 22. For us, it was fun to pop into local bakeries, grab cheap french wine, and attempt to order food or flail about the language. We enjoy the whole trying to figure out the local ways aspect and it seems more adventurous and fun than an impediment to our activities, but I can totally understand that this doesn’t agree with everyone and would be more of an impediment than it’s worth.
We didn’t have any problem mixing with the locals. Every evening we went to the bodega down the street from our hotel and bought wine and camembert and some cured meat, and by the 3rd day of our stay, we were sitting in the back, drinking wine and smoking a hookah with the store owner.
The american bar and pub scene is not something that Paris embraces, and a friend of mine was really annoyed that he couldn’t just walk off the street into a bar and get a pint of budweiser. We found plenty of places in Montmartre where you could walk in off the street and order wine by the glass and sit down at a table outside.
Yeah, the Orsay was awesome. We got tipped off that if you are only going to see one museum, go to the Orsay. Rodin’s ‘Gates of Hell’ was quite fun to gawk at.
If you didn’t care for the crowds, the filth, vibe and food/drink scene in Paris, I would avoid ever going to Amsterdam. You literally have to elbow people out of your way (or be elbowed) in order to walk on the sidewalk, lest you get pushed in front of a tram. There’s a decent pub scene on Leidseplein, but at 10 euros for an 8 oz “glass” of heineken, it is not worth it. And dutch food is very lack luster, save the coffee and sweets. You pretty much have to be stoned AND oozing with cash to enjoy eating in that city.
Barbie:
We spent two full days of our time in Paris just wandering around the city, getting lost, and not hitting tourist attractions. We made it a point to try to hit neighborhoods, rather than just sticking to the main streets. But we never found a good place for mingling with the locals, French language or otherwise. Perhaps we were in the wrong sections of town, I don’t know. (I’ve since been told that the Latin Quarter is good for that, and we didn’t spend much time there.)
Crowds and filth in and of themselves don’t much bother me. I love New Orleans and Mexico City, both of which have similar reputations (though both, and especially Mexico City, are notably cleaner than Paris). Had we enjoyed other aspects of our stay more, I certainly would have been able to look past that.
Maybe it was the laid-back vibe that wasn’t my speed. It’s been hard for me to put a finger on. A lot of people suggested that we should just grab a bottle of wine and a hunk of bread and go sit somewhere and people watch. But with the notable exception of the quality of the bread, I can do that anywhere, without having to take an 8-hour flight each way.
Again, I don’t want to sound like I’m ragging on it; we actually enjoyed Paris. We just didn’t fall in love with it the way so many people seem to (and, frankly, the way I expected to).
“But with the notable exception of the quality of the bread, I can do that anywhere, without having to take an 8-hour flight each way.”
Well, you can also find a bar and do that without getting on a plane, too. Just sayin’.
I get everything you’re saying. In fact, I can only name one attraction that I would want to go back for (seeing a performance at the Paris Opera House). Realistically, we’re probably more likely to use Paris for it’s laid-back hang-out quality as a stop-and-get-over-jet-lag-on-the-way-to-another-part-of-europe city than an attraction city, just to walk around and eat bread etc.
Anyways – did you ever find a bottle of Cidre du Normandie?
Well, you can also find a bar and do that without getting on a plane, too.
True enough, though I can’t find a bar and drink with Parisians (or Londoners, or whomever). Meeting and getting to know the locals is a big part of what I like to do when I travel.
seeing a performance at the Paris Opera House
Shit, just seeing the inside of the building. I don’t give a shit about opera, but the building is gorgeous.
did you ever find a bottle of Cidre du Normandie?
Forgot all about it, actually. D’oh!
If I find a distributor, (I’m looking right now), I’m going to buy a case of the stuff and I’ll save you a bottle.
Check Wisconsin. They can get everything up there.