Paris Overview

I spent nearly two weeks with Di Yin in Paris in May 2011, leaving the bay area on Wednesday, May 11, and returning on Tuesday, May 24.

I enjoyed my trip.

There is no feature that always comes to mind when I think of Paris. Rather, my memory of Paris is colored by an assortment of facets that each slightly distinguish it from other cities I've visited. These features are French food (more on that later), the people-watching/cafe scene (again, details later), the Seine, and Paris's size.

When I think about Paris, I'll frequently think of the Seine. It's central to the city. One might guess this oft-encountered geological feature would be an obstacle but it's not. Its countless bridges make it easy to cross wherever you are. Furthermore, it's a pleasant place to stroll along. The Seine always has footpaths on both sides of the river. Indeed, there are often multiple walkways on each side, one at water-level and one at street-level higher above. Thus, in contrast to London's Thames, the Seine is prettier, narrower, and much more welcoming to walkers, picnickers, and whatnot-ers.

Transportation
Paris feels like a compact city. I think it feels small because it invites walking. The Seine is a nice place to walk along on your way somewhere, and it's easily found, whether intentionally or not. Also, in Paris areas with large streets and many cars have relatively wide sidewalks. Areas with narrow streets tend to have no traffic so it doesn't matter how wide those sidewalks are.

I think Paris feels compact because the metro stations are close together. Metro stations are placed about five or maybe seven minutes walking apart. No matter where you are, you can get to a station in a couple of minutes and be rapidly on your way to another part of the city. This also means that if someplace we wanted to visit was two or three stops away, we'll often walk it rather than take the train. After all, we're only talking about twenty minutes and, beside, we'll get to enjoy the weather outside and see more of the city this way.

Nevertheless, we regularly used Paris's metro system. It's every bit as complex and comprehensive as London's. My only complaint about the system is that the subway transfers require a lot of walking, especially in stations where more than two lines cross. Indeed, if we were in a major transfer station and simply wanted to transfer to take the other line one stop, we found it more efficient to walk to the next station rather than transfer and take the train.

Trains run often (every couple minutes). Once, we got off a train at the end of the platform farthest from the exit. By the time we walked to the other end of the platform, the next train had arrived.

Some of the metro system lines use trains but others use vehicles that look and feel like trains but have big wheels. Only at certain stations can you manage to see the bottom of the cars and notice the difference. Regardless, for getting on and off metro vehicles, one has to press a button or flip a lever to trigger the doors to open. The vehicles respond to these actions before reaching a complete stop. That is, the doors can open while the train's still slowing down in a station. It's a bit scary.

I also should say that, though Paris is more pedestrian-friendly than any American city, it's not as pedestrian-friendly as Barcelona. Paris also doesn't have anything like Barcelona's Old Town, a whole neighborhood with a ton of personality and a tangled mess of pedestrian-only streets.

Incidentally, Paris has the same bicycle rental system that I spotted in Barcelona, where one can check out a bike from most metro stations and return it at any other bike station. We saw many people on these bikes.

Paris's Look
Paris has the same predominance of grand buildings as London. At first I thought these buildings tended toward Gothic architecture (I made a note regarding this halfway through my trip) but I realized later that it's a false impression--it's simply that the neighborhoods we tended to be in at the beginning of our trip were built in the Middle Ages and hence had lots of Gothic churches. Other areas in Paris have other types of architecture, including grand Federalist or Roman-style buildings (grand colonnades and all that) and churches in a variety of styles.

Paris has the same wrought-iron balconies that I enjoyed seeing everywhere in Barcelona but didn't see much in Rome.

Paris doesn't have London's density of small, cute squares and parks.

The left (south) bank is livelier and more diverse than the right bank, though the right bank isn't a slouch (I'm just making a comparative statement). Likewise, the left bank has more cultural features such as bookstores.

Regarding bookstores, the book industry in Paris is like nowhere else I've been. Virtually all the bookstores in Paris are used bookstores with a disorganized feel that's somehow appealing. They stock old books (not merely "used" books). Furthermore, the handful of new-book bookstores I spotted are on specialized topics (Tahiti, art, anthropology, etc.). I didn't see any large, clean, modern, general-purpose bookstores like Barnes and Noble.

Sometimes we'd see military men in combat fatigues with submachine guns patrolling the streets. This seemed normal to everyone (other pedestrians, the military men) and did not make us nervous in the least.

Food
Di Yin and I enjoyed the food, though I not quite as much as the food in Rome.

My trip to Paris changed my image of French food; I learned that my image of French food as involving complex, heavy sauces is kind of wrong. We ate often in bistros. The dishes we were served let the taste of the ingredients shine through. There was little to no use of spices or seasoning. Di Yin says Paris taught her the appeal of cooking things gently and of cooking things in generous amounts of butter.

In addition to French restaurants, we often saw restaurants serving food from the south coast of the Mediterranean. I mostly mean restaurants serving North African and Middle Eastern food (especially Moroccan, Tunisian, and Lebanese). Given France's colonial presence in these areas, none of this is surprising. We also saw some Greek and Turkish restaurants as well.

What is surprising is the number of Japanese restaurants we spotted. They're pretty common--certainly much more common than I expected--and they looked respectable.

Overall, Paris seems to be a somewhat culinarily diverse city (certainly more so than Barcelona). Though not common, we did notice other cuisines such as Chinese and Indian. I was surprised I didn't see much Vietnamese, as Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos were former French colonies.

Oh, and yes, you can indeed get good bread everywhere. Or at least baguettes: every baguette we had was good. The pastries varied in quality. While I often enjoyed the various pastries I sampled, the croissants, for instance, were not uniformly better than what one can find in the bay area. The handful of good bay area bakeries make better ones than some that I tried in Paris. By the way, savory croissants such as ham and cheese croissants are an American invention--I didn't see a single one in Paris.

Finally, I appreciated that all restaurants have their menus posted outside. It helped us decide where to eat. Also, it turns out this is dependable--it's the law in France.

People Watching
France is on continental Europe's eating schedule, meaning a late lunch, a visit to a cafe for aperitifs in late afternoon, and dinner around eight or nine p.m. at night. This habit of late afternoon drinks (actually, people-watching, as the focus seems to be) appears to be more evolved in Paris than in other European cities (Rome, Barcelona) I've visited.

People-watching is important to Parisians. In late afternoon, sidewalk tables at virtually all cafes we passed would be filled. In America, people sitting in pairs face each other, or at least mostly face each other. In Paris, the pairs sit side by side, each person facing out to the sidewalk to watch the passers-by.

Furthermore, tables inside cafes were universally empty. It's clear the prevalence of late-afternoon aperitifs is not due to the drinks; rather, they're just an excuse to sit and watch the world.

Language
French is the working language. Di Yin spoke French to people and people replied in kind, not attempting to switch back to English. (Maybe Di Yin looks foreign to them, so they didn't know she spoke English.) Even the few times when people later discovered Di Yin speaks English fluently, they were willing to answer Di Yin in French when she spoke French to them. It's clear everyone we talked to was simply more comfortable with French than English.

By the way, between using my Spanish background, recognizing words corrupted into English, and knowing some Latin roots, I could sometimes get the gist of written French (historic plaques, menus, advertisements, etc.). Di Yin of course was much better at this than me.

Miscellaneous
The weather was great. The temperature was in the upper 60s or 70s during our trip. We walked around without jackets. A simple long-sleeve or, sometimes, short-sleeve shirt did fine. The skies were clear most days and, even when they were not, it never rained.

It wouldn't get dark until late (after 9pm), making for long days (sometimes too long) of activities and explorations.

Paris may be as inexhaustible as London and New York City. I'd probably make this comment without the modal caveat ("may") if I could read French. As it is, some of the secondary sights, temporary exhibits, etc. are not fully translated into English and thus might not be worth visiting as an English-only speaker.

A historical fact on the rise and fall of the Jesuits: in 1627, King Louis XIII laid the first stone of a Jesuit church in Paris. In 1764, less than 150 years later, the Jesuits were expelled from the country. How's that for a fall from grace?