LETTER FROM PARIS #1

Every place tourists visit has "sights" that give the city its reputation as a destination, or at least the people in charge think it makes them a destination. Sometimes it is ill-placed hubris, as in: "Toronto is a world-class city because we have the world’s tallest (used to be) free standing structure."

For the sake of my letters of passion from Paris, why should I spend too much time “seeing the sights?” I leave that to busloads of gawking Americans or hordes of Japanese each frantically taking pictures of each other standing in front of (insert it yourself) the “sight.” I marvel no, make that giggle, at the number of guys I see standing in the Champ de Mars trying to line up their girlfriends in such a way that the Eiffel Tower will appear to be growing out of her head. Or the millions of pictures extant of a squealing (with delight?) spouse as she seems to be enjoying being covered with filthy pigeons in the Piazza San Marco. My favourite experience was meeting the American woman on a 12 day see-everything trip in Europe with her 19 year old son. I met them on the train going from Florence to Rome. They had started in Salzburg three days before and were on a dizzying trip to everywhere. They told me, not without just a little but of pride, that they had disembarked from the train at Pisa, hailed a cab, drove to the Leaning Tower, took picture standing in front of it, then hailed a cab back to the station to get the next train.

I don't mind a bit (how patronizing of me?) that people gather at the Eiffel Tower or Montparnasse. But I've seen them all. More than once. Those sights are the "outer" Paris.(I admit I have not been to Pisa.) But for so much - I’ve “been there – done that.” It’s what you do when you’re a tourist.

I still remember my first trip to Paris more than thirty years ago. I was enchanted. Many people are, enchanted that is, unless they are determined in advance to find the French rude, unfriendly, inhospitable and arrogant. (Strange they never, especially Americans, mind that New York is that way.) After that first trip I came home and started to write what I thought would be an article about how easy it was to “do” Paris on a budget. The “article” blossomed into a ten thousand word essay that rambled in circles but loved Paris.

It is the love that never dies. Never, in spite of the odd episode of the haughty waiter or the arrogant salesperson. But you find those everywhere.

No, what I wrote was a celebration of the “inner” Paris: of the people, of the food, of the way they cross the road dodging traffic, about the French people you can chat with at a cafe as they sip a Pelfort and keep an eye on their dog. (Dogs seem to be better behaved in Paris, except for the natural "urge" made worse by the fact that Parisians do not "stoop and scoop," About how the hookers looked like they were out of Central Casting working on Irma La Douce. They hung out around Rue St. Denis, which has since become "cleaned up" and is now less of what the girls here call “the track.”

In two days we arrive. In two days I will start to see Paris for the first time again because I will see it through the eyes of my 13 year old granddaughter. She is in a French immersion school and this is her first time in a completely uni-lingual place.

I can hardly wait.