We’ll Always Have Paris

What’s Not to Love in the City of Love?

AAAAAAAH, Paris: Pah-REE!!! 

City of Lights, City of Love, Cité of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. French capital, world capital, food capital. City of la mode, city of the first sidewalks, the first walking city, streets bustling with fashionable people, everywhere a red carpet. See them saunter by with their sacs banane, their baskets blanches, their jean maman—mais non, those are tourists teeming on les grands boulevards, tottering on the Pont Neuf and trotting along the Rue de Rivoli! The allure of the lights and the crisp, autumn air is as irresistible as a fluffy, buttery croissant, and all Parisian roads lead to the pâtisserie. 

When in Rome, as they say, there’s no way not to join them. Allons-y!

Et voilà, the Louvre: queen of museums, catalog of the world’s treasures, majestic monument to an empire that once won wars. A memorial stuffed with the plunder of so much of Egypt that a pyramid pokes through its antiquity-engorged bowels! We assemble here among the masses and discover that the French surrendered not only the word queue but also the entire concept to the British. Eventually, the glass doors part and we descend beneath the Cour Napoléon, riding our Escalator du Triomphe like Le Petit Caporal himself, returning to reclaim his spoils. Inside, the masses reamass and press toward the exhibition halls, storming the wings like Parisian insurgents against the Bastille, demanding heads: give us our selfies with the guillotined Winged Victory and the disarmed Venus de Milo! Beyond the barricade of Art Appreciation and the inundation of Influencers, the Mona Lisa mocks us with her smile. 

When the press and sweat of the humanities become too much to bear, we depart for the surface—but first would you like to stop at the gift shop, the Starbucks, or the massive underground shopping mall beneath the historic Place du Carrousel? Did Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People whet your appetite for a Bic Mac or a new iPhone? The Louvre is full of wonders. Ooh la la!

At last, it’s time for le déjeuner! Which of the spots on the Rue Saint-Honoré shall we choose? The one with the matching bistro chairs and awning, or perhaps the one with the steak frites, the steak tartare, and the French onion soup? Oh, that’s all of them: pick your favorite matching color set and settle in for a carafe of your favorite unknown vin de table. Parlez pas français? Worry not! The waitstaff speak seventeen languages and don’t have time for your Emily-in-Paris cosplaying as they squeeze work in between cigarette breaks. The only thing you need to know is that the wine will be cheap and everything will taste good. While we rest our bones and sip our Bordeaux-or-Beaujolais, we survey with supercilious glee the parade of fanny-packed non-Parisians as they squint at the menu and decide whether they’ll have the steak frites at the red-and-yellow or the blue-and-white brasserie. Bon appétit!

The streets of Paris beckon in the post-lunch lull. Today there is no time to tramp the Champs-Élysées or tour the Eiffel Tower. A traipse through the Tuileries and a promenade along the quay will bring us to the Pont des Arts into the Latin Quarter. Soon we are at the Panthéon, that on-again-off-again Temple of the Nation, Monument to Martyrs, Sepulcher of Secular Saints. We present our timed-entry, booked-in-advance tickets to an usher, then to a ticket checker, then to a security guard, and then place our bottles of unidentified liquids and various weaponry on the conveyor belt of the X-Ray machine. Safely inside, Foucault’s pendulum ticks and traces the minutes in ellipses above the floor. We descend beneath the stones to the crypt, and stop halfway for the restrooms, before paying our respects to Voltaire, Rousseau, and Victor Hugo—and to the empty cenotaph of Josephine Baker, whose heirs wanted the honor but not the permanent address. We show our timed-entry, booked-in-advance tickets once more and climb the 206 steps up to and across the roof towards The Panorama. Stepping out onto the colonnade we—pause. The tricolor flag flaps rouge-blanc-et-bleu against an azure sky, a salute to France’s Iron Lady glinting in the sun. 

Here above Haussmann’s mansard rooftops, most of the city lies before and beyond us, and we feast on it all. There’s Notre Dame, still draped in her mourning dress of scaffolding; over there’s Sacré-Coeur, sitting atop Montmartre; in the distance: the skyscrapers of La Défense and the residential towers of the banlieue beyond the Boulevard Périphérique. Up above, the wind rustles our hair but none of the 50 million people who visit Paris each year ruffle our feathers.

Back on the ground, we wander along the Left Bank, admiring the linearity of Boulevard Saint-Germain, Baron Haussmann’s handiwork. But it is not long before the weary world wears on our souls and soles. There: a free table at Les Deux Magots! We relax on the Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés and bask in the reflected glory of Hemingway, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre as we try to catch the eye of an insouciant server. And as we wait and wait—this is France’s speciality: Inefficiency-as-a-Service—the glow eventually fades. Is it because the sun has set behind a mansard? Non, it has been eclipsed by a cloud of cigarette smoke! The nostrils clench, the pupils dilate, the feet tap, but at long last, our drinks appear—the perfect Negroni: viscous, vermillion, and velvety. In our sobriety, we toast to our salubrity, and all is forgiven as we inhale the sweet smell of liquor and the vapor of a dozen Marlboros. Sartre was wrong: hell is not other people. Paris is.

We summon the server again to request l’addition, and he miraculously appears at our fingertips, a smile in place of a sneer. We are all friends now, united in our common desire for us to leave as soon as possible. The bill is dispatched with a tap of plastic on a handheld device. This is not an American CVS, so we have not been asked to tip 20-25-30% for the sub-stellar non-service rendered, nor are we asked whether we would like to donate €1 to the World Orphans of Save the Rainforest Awareness Fund.

This is a civilized country, after all.

We amble back through the warren of roads that Haussmann did not bulldoze, back across the Seine, shrouded in a fine mist—no, it’s the fumes of two-million smokers, finding their level. On the Île de la Cité, the medieval heart of Paris, we stop before the Grand Dame, surrounded by many well-wishers and a handful of worshippers who have queued up months in advance for her reopening while workers put the final touches on her stunning resurrection. I hear the gift shop will be otherworldly. Beyond the fenced-off streets we cross into the fashionable Île Saint-Louis, down the main drag with its artisan fromagerie, its artisan boulangerie, its artisan Carrefour Express, and across the Pont Marie into the Marais.

Here, the buildings hug narrow passages full of people. For a moment, we think that the Parisians have taken once more to the streets in revolt, but even now they are not engaging in their post-monarchic national pastime, the strike: for the streets teem with tourists, Parisians, and gays, all enjoying Gay Paree. An errant automobile creeps through the crowds, but the streets belong to the flâneur and the boulevardier. Everywhere there is a café or bar or brasserie, boutiques and commerces de bouche. 

After three or four left turns, we find ourselves on a quieter street, at a corner bistro, no tourists in sight. We settle into matching chairs, order our vin de table, inhale a puff of someone else’s cigarette smoke, and close our eyes as the thrum of the city beats in our chests. Paris is a moveable feast, but any visit is only a tasting menu: it will tantalize and tempt but somehow never fully satisfy. Rome may be the eternal city, but this is the one that leaves us wanting more. At last the wine arrives, we take a sip, and sigh:

AAAAAAAH, Paris.

---

Merci beaucoup for joining me on this romp through the City of Light and the City of Yes. As ever, if you enjoy my writing, please share with friends and subscribe. Happy Thanksgiving!