The flight route is always the same: you cut across Ireland, coming in on England's southwestern corner and then you swing south toward Brittany. This is your first sighting of France.
(you can see it on my screen; and yes, it's breakfast time on the airplane!)
In recent decades, France has been like a lottery ticket that always has a good set of numbers for me. I'd gotten better at speaking the language, I'd mastered the public transportation system -- from the TGV trains to the rural buses that help you get to the most remote corners of this rather large (by Europe's standards) country. I'd walked, climbed, biked, kayaked, camped, rented, hoteled, airbnb's this place so much that honestly it felt like a second home, but one where I never had to do any paid work. Once, when a university proposed a faculty exchange, asking me if I'd want to teach there for a couple of months out of a year I said no. I never wanted to be obliged to be there. I traveled with the excitement of experiencing it on my own terms.
But this time it feels really different. France and the French went through what we went through back home and we are all changed as a result of it. But is it different here? We'll see.
Connections made, planes went up on time and landed in the correct destinations (that's not a guarantee!) also on time. I pick up my carry-on and walk out of the airport in Paris.
There isn't a city that has pulled at every emotion in me as much as Paris has. And now, after all the drama of these two years, emotions are running high. I remember the songs and scenes from a Paris of yore...
And as we drive into the city, I can't take my eyes off of the streets of Paris. How is it now, from the backseat of a car? Yep, I'm coming in by car. I don't take the RER commuter train from the airport. It can be crowded. I don't want to be shoulder to shoulder. So I booked a direct transfer. One with a vaccinated driver. (The email discussion I had over that one was so... French. The people here like to see themselves as the ultimate protectors of privacy. Madame, we here value privacy. You cannot ask the vaccinated status of the driver. We there value privacy as well. But you can always ask. They ask. I get my vaccinated driver.)
And now I am at my sweet little hotel, where because of my pandemic cancellations (there were many), I hold an enormous amount of credit. This time they put me in an attic room. I'd never stayed in it, always preferring a room just below with many big windows looking out on the street. But, they claimed this one was available and the other one was not and hey, I'm not complaining! Here's my room...
... with the view.
The ride into the city is strange enough. The arrival at the hotel is even stranger. Masks, of course. Also new protocols: new cleaning regiments (rooms stay empty for a day between occupants whenever possible), a staggered breakfast schedule. The goal here is to minimize people crossing paths in public spaces.
I'm tired after the long, masked flight, but still, I feel like this trip was a last minute gift. Stars were aligned: the Covid rates are way down in France, their vaccination rates are soaring, my own vaccination status is at its most potent moment. Having finally traveled here, I'm not going to just stay in the room. I go out for my first tentative walk in Paris. I'm hungry! It's 1:30 p.m. Soon the lunch window here will close. I stop at the nearby Breizh Cafe. The one with the buckwheat crepes (mine is with pumpkin and other "seasonal vegetables" and an egg and goat cheese; that's cider in the glass -- a Brittany fave).
This is my chance to really look around me. To take it all in. The eateries are all packed. Americans aren't traveling (much) yet, but other Europeans are and the Parisians, too, are making up for lost time. There's so much chatter around me! Everyone is eating, laughing, talking, inside, outside -- it's almost frantic in its intensity.
Restaurants, cafes and bars are fined if caught serving someone who doesn't show a pass sanitaire (proof of vaccination or documented negative COVID test within the last day). So everyone except me whips out their phone and has their code scanned in. But they are forgiving for Americans (for now). Our flimsy little vaccination cards with illegibly scribbled information on it is accepted with a smile.
After lunch, I walk. Don't ask me where. In my neighborhood. In the park. To the pharmacy to see if they are still issuing substitute passes for Americans. They were, but they've stopped. To a bakery. To a clothing store, just to look. Bonjour Madame! Please disinfect your hands before coming in! Merci!
(definitely the year of the crazy velos (bicycles) in Paris!)
(the scarves are out!)
chestnuts are early leaf shedders...
(flowers that match the season)
Honestly, I think the French grimaced at the vaccination mandates but then bit the bullet and went for it and in exchange they were given back their social time over food. And they are using it!
Inside public places, masks are required. I am surprised that 95% of the masks worn by French people are the surgical ones.
There are a few of the KN95s among some of the elderly, but for everyone else, young and old -- it's the standard white and blue disposable one. (Well, many of the high school kids favor the black version)
Back home, we've mostly gone the cloth route. They have not. For us, buying medical grade masks is a challenge. There are a lot of fake ones on the market. Here, there must be some Santa Claus leaving boxes of the surgicals at everyone's doorstep because they are all the same and everyone has one.
So how does it feel to be in Paris?
So strange and so strangely beautiful too!
(and there is that incredible bread product!)
But it's a busy city and my idea of popping in unannounced to random eating places has to be revised. I stopped by one eatery that would have been good for dinner -- lots of outdoor tables, good menu -- and asked if I could book a table. Sorry, we're full tonight. Wait, it's Tuesday! Call ahead, the waiter says and hands me a card.
In the end, after walking so much earlier in the afternoon, I opt to go out and stop at the first agreeable place with outside tables and heat lamps. It's nippy here in the evenings! I didn't have to go far. Parisians do not like to eat dinner right at 7. If you head out then you may get lucky and beat the crowds. I found a lovely table at le Comptoir. My younger girl and I had once eaten lunch there after a snowstorm. Outside! Their heat lamps are that good!
And the food (pumpkin soup with chorizo and a fish over risotto) was very very good.
And now my dears, let me dig into my little bag of macarons and cookies from the bakery, then settle in for that famous first night in Europe, where your internal clock fights with you all night long, giving in to sleep only toward the very end.
