The bad: Sundays. Many businesses shut down for a week or two in August -- some for the entire month -- and depending on where you are it can make life tricky. The busy tourist areas were mostly open, but our neighbourhood's ghost-town status made it close to impossible to buy anything -- wine, groceries, pastries, wine -- after 1 p.m. on Sundays. After one frustrating day of rest, however, we started planning ahead. It was annoying on a practical level, but idealistically I support the idea of a universal city shutdown. If you can't beat it, join it...
The encroyable: Paris-Plages. Many Parisians head for coastal sands in August, but a relatively recent addition brings the beaches to Paris. I scoffed at Paris-Plages at first, when I saw the blue parasols, deck chairs and imported sand strewn along the banks of the Seine. But that was before I strolled along the Left Bank with my family. Just west of the Eiffel Tower, a kilometre-long section has been transformed into a fin du siecle-style playground, with a mask-making craft station for the kids (their unidentified parents are pictured above), other fantastic child diversions, including a Via Ferrata-style installation bolted to the concrete embankment (pictured below), several leafy lounge areas, a tetherball court, and even a series of neck and shoulder massage stations (yes please!). And it was all free. Encroyable indeed!
2. The good: The Velib bicycle-sharing system. Speaking of freebies, this launched a few weeks after my last visit in 2007, and I was happy to see it thrive. It encompasses around 14,000 bikes and 1,230 stations, and the city was thick with Anglophones wobbling around. My dad seemed especially pleased that riders can pedal between stations and, so long as they don't sign any one bike out for more than 30 minutes, pay nothing (other than the $2.50 signup fee). The system is not perfect: It takes at least three minutes to sign a bike out, they can only be deployed one at a time, and there are no real-time updates on bike supply. But anything, anything, to cut down on motor traffic and give visitors a break from budgetary stress is a very good thing.
The bad: Parking. If you are foolish enough to rent a car for inner-city sightseeing, don't expect to be able to get out of your vehicle. Even when loading our luggage into a rented Renault for an out-of-town trip, it was impossible to park legally. Every single spot was taken around our apartment on the outskirts of the city centre, so I was forced to pull into a loading zone that became jammed with surly delivery drivers in a matter of seconds. "Your mother is a hampster..." etc.
The encroyable: The Metro. For about $2 a trip (half that for kids over the age of three), you can get anywhere in downtown Paris quickly, easily and fairly pleasantly. True, you will probably be serenaded by a pan-handler -- some of those guys can really sing! -- but the incredibly extensive system and shockingly cheap fares make any Canadian transit system look like a joke. I'm looking at you, Toronto...
3. The good: Anything baked. Pastries. Croissants. Baguettes. Just when you think you've had the best pain au chocolat ever...you have another one. And it's better. How do Paris bakeries produce such consistently delicious, fresh fare? And for so little: baguettes are less than $150 -- half what I pay in Toronto and 17 times as tasty. Further proof that every French person has a lipo-suction machine at home.
The bad: Soft drinks. Restaurant prices in the Marais, for example, are exorbitant. $6 for a scoop of ice cream? Are you kidding me? You could buy 40 litres of Neapolitan back home for that. Elsewhere, however, food prices are more reasonable...except when it comes to soft drinks. Why must a can of Coke cost at least $4? Maybe it's because of this next item...
The encroyable: Wine. I did not have a mediocre glass, carafe, bottle or barrel of wine in Paris. Red, white or rose, it was all either good or great, always French, mostly from Bordeaux (you can't go wrong), and always at least a third of what it would cost in Toronto. During the ubiquitous 4-6 p.m. happy hours, a refreshing/fortifying glass went for as little as $2. After a few of those, it was almost possible to forgive the soda prices...
4. The good: Automatic washrooms. They may not always be there when you need them, but the free, self-cleaning washrooms scattered around downtown Paris are a welcome relief from most of the WCs in brasseries and around major sights. I'm looking at you, Pere Lachaise cemetery. Bad enough to raise the dead!
The bad: Le dog poop. Paris has come a long way since I backpacked around Europe in the mid-1990s. On that year-long trip, at least 75 per cent of my missteps in la merde took place in the French capital. On this trip, however, I never once had to scrape doo-doo off my shoe. The aforementioned mass exodus may account for some of this -- I saw very few poodles parading about -- but the French also appear to have embraced cleaner sidewalks. Bag dispensers were available in many parks, and a campaign has even taken root in which vigilantes stick tiny French flags in abandoned turds (pictured below, sorry!), presumably to warn walkers, induce patriotic shame, and inspire visiting Canadians to employ new and innovative lawn-protection strategies at home.
The encroyable: City parks. If nothing else, two weeks in Paris made me appreciate the mind-blowing parks system. There are more than 420 municipal parks and gardens, ranging from the deservedly famous Tuileries and Luxembourg gardens (pictured below) to quaint little neighbourhood havens of tranquility like the one around the corner from our apartment. Across the board, the parks are clean, beautifully landscaped, and equipped with creative, challenging play structures. Walking past a 600-year-old church and suddenly spotting a stegosaurus-shaped climbing wall saved me from taking out a line of credit for ice cream on more than one occasion...