Okay fine. I give up. I love Paris too.
There’s something terribly cliche about loving Paris. It’s like loving chocolate, puppies, and The Princess Bride. Of course you love those things. So does everyone else. Not interesting. After reading the 10,000th love poem to the City of Obvious, I had decided I wasn’t going to comply. I was going to snob the snobs.
On my big Europe solo wander, I spent a couple days in the city. Just long enough to meet some of the smelly fellows who shared my dorm room (including one who didn’t seem to have packed anything but underwear), walk rain-soaked streets where fancy people were being fancy, and disprove the stereotype of delicious Parisian cuisine: the kebabs were just as greasy and gross there as everywhere! Take THAT!
Finding a copy of The Tropic of Cancer on a hostel shelf a couple towns down the road made me more kindly disposed…but only to Paris of the 1930s. That age of Gallic elegance amid crass ennui and the inherent decline of being on top was past; the 21st century could keep its tourist temple!
Then I got this tour guide job, and where must I guide, every tour? Friggin Paris! Of course. So I went to Paris. Ready for snobs, stinky cheese, and pretentious wine. Over-dressed fashionistas sipping café in a café, staring at ca-mé. Grandiose museums with grandiose price tags and inscrutable art that we come see because They have told us we should.
“Yup.” I’d say, snarky and justified. “That’s the Mona Lisa. Just like it always looks, on every postcard and dorm room wall.”
What did I find? Precisely poignant cheese to go with eloquently savory wine that tastes like the place it grew. A city so dedicated to living well that they dress well just to go to the café, where they make no pretense of isolationism but angle all the chairs straight out to overtly people-watch. Just the way I love to do. And if I now have nicer clothes by several notches than when I came around as a vagabond? Feels good. Doesn’t mean I’m superficial now. And the museums? Succulent with centuries of creativity and culture, enduring manifestations and reflections of the historical, or spiritual, or emotional, or sexual, or tragic, or any number of the other passions in human life. All it took was a little education, a little context, a little knowledge of how to look, some kind of (ahem) guidance, and it all came alive. Not inscrutable. Beautiful.
And the last piece? The snobs? Did I find them? I found one. But then I stopped being him.
So next season I’ll go back to Paris. I’ll walk those gorgeous boulevards, thinking about Baron Haussmann, past the Hotel de Ville (which was never a hotel) and the Conciergerie prison (which kind of was) until my feet ache with satisfaction. Then I’ll sit on a wicker chair beside a mid-sized stream of joie de vivre, and eat the flavors that tell me where I am. (I know a great place for boeuf tartare if you want to come along.) I’ll watch petanque, sit by the Seine, mirror the emotions Rodin placed in clay, and get the chills when I hear Emmanuel ring out of from Notre Dame’s south tower, the way the 13 ton bell did when it announced the end of Nazi occupation.
And best of all, I’ll sit down to dinner, or lean back to a coffee or stroll around with a gelato, visiting with the friends I’ve found in that city. In that city which I’ve found to be a friend. Yes, I admit it, I love Paris.
I’m glad you love Paris. There’s a reason everyone does, as you now know. Of course kebab is not French cuisine; when you go back, make sure to also buy a baguette and some cheese or delicious ham and eat sitting by the Seine or in the grass in the Tuilleries and listen to hippie music on the steps of the Sacre Coeur in the evening, while watching the lights come on in the city below.
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Good list, those are all excellent things to do! I’m fortunate in that many of my tours start in the 18th arrondissement on Saturdays, and there’s a great local market that day on the Boulevard des Batignolles, perfect for a crepe, some proper cheese, fresh fruit and miscellaneous other goodies, then taking them up the hill to Sacre Coeur. See you over there someday!
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It’s hard to deny the charm of that city. I didn’t think I would like it but it turns out I love it. 🙂 Glad you enjoyed it.
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Expectations are the key to enjoying something, and I think, for me at least, and perhaps you as well, knowing everyone loves a place is dangerous, since if we assume we’ll agree, we’re actually setting ourselves up to be let down. (Does that make any sense?) I think it’s a good policy to continue expecting not to love popular places, setting ourselves up for pleasant surprises!
Except Pisa. Pisa just blows.
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Very true. A lot of places I had no expectations of turned out wonderful!
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It sounds bad to tell travelers to have really low expectations, but it’s good advice! Does any particular place that surprised you come to mind?
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The Utah desert surprised me and is one of my favorite places on earth. (Arches national park.) Joshua tree national park. The entire country of France. The region of New England. All places I had little expectation for but ended up knocking my socks off.
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Great post – Paris is still on my list of places to visIt. And I’m glad I’m not the only one with an unexplainable liking for the Princess Bride…it never has made any sense to me
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Loving the Princess Bride is a requirement for all people of good repute, as I know you to be! Or perhaps it was just well-timed and well-suited to a particular moment in my childhood. Either way, I can’t watch that movie without loving every line.
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We just had six weeks in France with two of them in Paris with a daughter who now lives there. Everything you observed fits with what I observed too. Glorious city. And we walked until we dropped.
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😀 snobbing the snobs? What were you thinking dude? Well I am the same way 😂
Parisssss!! Ah the Paris!!
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It’s such a dilemma when it’s trendy to not be trendy. What is one to do? 😉
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I love paris, but not those “love” locks, they are not beautiful 🙂
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I’m inclined to agree. At first I thought it was a sweet idea, but you only have to see a thousand of them cluttering a bridge, grasp all the wasted metal and paint of them, then see them destroy the things they’re on, and they’re not so sweet anymore. Whoever was first? Groovy. The 10,000 who followed need to write their own poems!
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People looking for love desperately, thinking if they lock it, they own it forever. But can love be locked? Of course, this is hors sujet.
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Brilliant post, most enjoyable, photography and your writing
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Thank you Cornelia!
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People love Paris because there is so much to love!
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I completely agree! Every time I go back I go see a new thing or two, and I still have a massive list.
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Loved your joke about the snob you met. I’ve never been to Paris, but I’ll make it there one day.
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Thank you! And I definitely recommend it. But as mentioned, try to have low expectations, if it’s not already too late. 😉
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