Paris and Parisians

 

This is a little celebration for me because its my first trip outside the country since last year when all the stem-cell treatment started. And it was great.

We managed to squeeze three nights out of the maw of time and so had Friday afternoon till Monday morning in an Airbnb that we had just plucked off the internet. It turned out it was right in the middle of Le Marais, one of the oldest areas on the middle of the city, on the North bank but only about 15 minutes walk from Notre Dame.

I'll only mention a couple of highlights because I want to say something about the feel of the city, but here are a couple of standouts:

On Friday, three hours after getting in, we managed to get into a Jazz club, Le Baiser Salé, and saw a great 5-piece. Everything was amazingly packed into its space, and there was the whole band and an audience of 60 plus their drinks, in a space that was smaller than some of the bigger sitting-rooms of Woodbridge. 

Then on the Sunday morning we woke early and went out into a beautiful quiet sunny early morning, with only street cleaners and joggers at first, and we walked slowly down to Notre Dame and watched the tourist city emerge, with languages from all over the world emerging around us. 

But let me say how Paris and the Parisians seemed:

But what struck me most was how sociable people seemed, compared to us Brits, I'm afraid. In cafes everyone just talked, with enthusiasm and enjoyment, and nobody was on their phone. When you went to a lunchtime bistro you got the impression that the four people next to you came here every Saturday just because it was much more fun to eat with your friends.

This sociability took on a brave and hardy side when it came to smoking. The outdoor smoking terraces were not the place for a quick fag but the place where you and your friends sat and smoked and made enthusiastic conversation on a cold March night for as long as you liked. And damn the health warnings.

Food seemed also to be linked to what it felt like to be French in Paris (and, I'd assume, anywhere else in France). The food was much better than in England, despite our recent improvements, and people seemed to take the enjoyment of it seriously. It wasn't a half-observed loaded pizza that you consumed in a daze. It was something tasty and calorific. But still people were visibly less fat than in England. Something about the relationship with food was definitely working better there.

Another thing was that people seemed proud of the city and it was clearly well-kept. The small parks and squares were all smart and ready for Spring's outbreak, and at the weekend all the children were brought out in their winter clothes to enjoy the place. There was really very little that was ugly (apart from the national library, which looks like an abandoned building project) and there did seem to be civic pride.

Now I'm very happy for real Parisians to tell me if I've totally misconstrued all this in a Candide-like way, but for now I am going to keep this golden glow and work out how we can get back there to enjoy some more of it. And to show our commitment, here are pics of us trying to look louche in the queue for the jazz club.