So, How Was Paris?

I went to Paris last week. Too Long? Don’t Read? Quatre out of cinq stars, would Paris again.

Why Paris?

My friend Jeff is a Dead can Dance follower. We planned a Paris trip to see them in concert, but then they canceled their tour. This left us with a tough decision: to give up on the trip, or go anyway. We decided to go to Paris even without the concerts. Surely, we thought, we could find something else to do.

The French

I studied French in high school, but I had never been to France. My four years of training thirty years ago allowed me to speak about three complete sentences of French over the course of the week, and otherwise I could only stare blankly at anyone who spoke to me. If only someone had needed me to ask them for directions to the library. Or the swimming pool.

In some French supermarkets, you have to weigh and sticker your own produce, so the checkout person doesn’t have to identify it. I had never done this in my life, despite numerous trips to American grocery stores, so I had no idea what was happening when the checkout lady pushed my apple back at me and said “Tu dois le peser. Peser! Peser! Peser!”

I resolved never to eat apples again. And then I asked her where the swimming pool was.

Most of the people I met spoke English, but I really wish I knew more French just to listen in. Like when our cab driver argued with a bicyclist for way longer than seemed necessary. They were probably talking about bike lanes and right of way, and who almost killed who, but they might just as easily have been disagreeing over some obscure detail in Rings of Power, like why Galadriel would wear armor bearing the symbol of Fëanor. Weren’t they, like, unfriends?

The Louvre

On our first full day, Jeff and I went to the Louvre. It is huge. We saw about a tenth of it.

The Louvre has so much priceless art that most of it is barely even a thing. There’s a crowd of people waiting in line to see the Mona Lisa, and that’s about it. Everything else is “yeah, art, whatever.”

Winged Victory of Samothrace? Yeah, whatever. She’s at the top of a stairwell. Michelangelo’s Captives? Yeah, whatever. I think they are at the back of sculpture room 45.

Our most favorite things were not really all that famous. Angry little alabaster dude. Giant Easter Island head. Three very rude looking 4000-year old Egyptian vases.

Spend a whole day for the Louvre. Take two or three. It just goes on and on.

The Hotels

Our first hotel room was good. Our second hotel room was awful. 

The first room was smaller than a cruise ship cabin. The beds were child-sized, and the bathroom was so tiny that it needed a triangular sink, or the door woudn’t close.

And this was the good one. Really the hotel was charming, well-situated, had a nice view, and a decent restaurant on the ground floor. If you wanted a place to stretch out, the lobby was spacious and filled with plants.

For variety, we moved to a different hotel at the halfway mark. We got a windowless room on the ground floor, in what was essentuially a filled-in courtyard. This room was spacious but strangely shaped, and it had one of these stylish modern showers with no door, so the water just splashed everywhere.

Jeff mentioned there was “somehing weird” about the shower drain, but it was just a gigantic hair clog. Nothing all that strange. Note: If someone gives you a plastic fork, hang on to it.

The true awesomeness started on the second day, when the thermostat stopped working. According to the front desk, all the thermostats in France were shut off by a directive from the government. I can find no corroboration of this, but sure. Maybe that happened.

Ordinarily we would just open a window, but our room had no windows, and the desk clerk claimed not to have the authority to move us to another room. So we spent the days with the door propped open, and spent the nights sleep-sweating in the oven-like heat.

To be clear, it was perfectly nice outdoors. We were just in a windowless room that should never have been made, that somehow gathered an astounding amount of heat from an unknown source. The front desk guy had no sympathy for us, because the lobby was also super-hot for no apparent reason.

So, there’s another lesson: when you look for the absolute cheapest hotel, there may be surprises.

Action Report

So what did we do? The Louvre, the Latin Quarter, Sainte-Chapelle, a dinner cruise, restaurants, shopping, games, tourism. We skipped Versailles because of a thunderstorm, and we never quite made it to the Eiffel Tower. But we did eat a lot of French food, and we did walk along the Seine, right where Duncan MacLeod parked his barge.

Every morning we went to the bakery for coffee and pastries. Every afternoon we wandered into a random corner restaurant. One maître d' dragged us into his place, and then took away our card game when the food came. It was so very charming.

At another place, a very bad waiter got my order wrong twice and took more than two hours to get us our bill. But we were not in a hurry, and we played lots of cards while we waited. That waiter did not take our cards away, and we would not have let him.

I bought T-shirts and a shopping bag, ate weird food, and took a lot of pictures. So, successful vacation!

Games

You might think you are cool, but are you “Playing Tak on a park bench in Paris” cool? No.

I carried a game wherever we went, and Jeff and I spent a few days cooking up a Pairs game called “Fishmonger.” It’s a two-player bidding game with some interesting strategy, though I wouldn’t call it finished yet. A few more tests.

And yes, we did break out the Tak set to play on a park bench across from Notre Dame.

I thought I might also take enough photos to create a Paris-themed Pairs deck, but I don’t think I managed it. I’m missing the money shot of the Eiffel Tower, and most of my other pictures are nearly identical buildings, pictures of Jeff, food pictures that only I care about, or artsy shots of wet cobblestones.

“Pairs: Artsy Shots of Wet Cobblestones,” coming soon to a game shop near you. Actually, I might use Midjourney to make a set of cards for Fishmonger. Seems the right project for it.

Getting Around

We took a cab once or twice, but mostly we took the Metro. This was usually fine, except late at night, when it was jam-packed, SRO, force your way into the doors. Not a great time to feel safe, either from pickpockets or the pandemic.

As far as that goes, almost nobody was wearing a mask, indoors or out, even in places where it was “required.” Jeff and I wore our masks everywhere and tried to stay safe and distant, but as in the US, Paris seems to want to pretend that Covid is no longer a thing.

On the way home from the late-night river cruise, we got scammed by a bicycle cab. He quoted us a price of €35, which seemed reasonable, and was about the same as a regular cab. The electric bicycle cab was a magical, device because it could go anywhere (bike lanes, traffic lanes, sidewalks, grass, the sky) and was also indestructible, because he drove us across oncoming traffic that we would have thought would kill us, and yet we lived. 

He kept offering to take us by an ATM so we could pay him (he did not take plastic) - but I kept saying I had enough, 50 in cash. Then halfway there, he said the fare was “35 per person” and we were like, okay, then drop us right here. The starting bid had been 35 total, and we were pretty sure “per person” was not even written on the price sheet he showed us. So, dangerous and scammy. Lesson learned, do not trust late night river cruise bike cab.

Final Thoughts

Because of the dire hotel situation, I came home two days early, but Jeff decided to hang back and tough it out. Still, despite various mishaps, four out of five stars, would Paris again.

I took a very good camera on this trip, my Canon M5, but most of the best shots came from my iPhone. I guess I could be disappointed in my “good” camera, or I could just accept that the camera in my phone is pretty darned good too, and I don’t need a dedicated vacation camera any more.

One thing my phone can’t manage is shallow depth of field, but there is great software for faking that now, so I might as well go that route. And the iPhone’s performance in low and mixed light was hands down superior to the Canon. The only place where the M5 was the breakout star was in portraits, so it does still have one purpose. But it probably does not belong in my travel bag.

And that’s it! I haven’t been to Europe since 2009 and I have no idea when I’ll go back, but it sure was fun. Now I get to see if I brought back any germs.