by It’s a sunny morning on the banks of the Seine. Sparrows twitter in the trees and the bouquinistes well too, after their recent victory over the French authorities.
“They wanted to remove our boxes for the Olympics,” says Ludo Communier, one of about 300 booksellers who have been working out of the small green booths that line the walls of the Seine for centuries. “We said ‘heaven’ – we’ve been here since before Napoleon Bonaparte.”
The authorities ordered the temporary removal of all the booths for “security” reasons, and to improve views of the Seine during the Games. The ensuing fury added to a turbulent 2023 for Paris.
Riots over police violence, protests over pension reforms, and an outbreak of bed bugs have put the Olympic host in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Usually the light mode bouquinistes According to Communier, they were prepared for a fight, but gave up last month when plans to remove them were stopped after intervention by President Macron.
For unionist Britons, there is something heartening about French resistance. How can you not love a city that is willing to riot out of books? It means Communier can now look forward to the Olympics, although he doubts the Seine will be clean enough for athletes (and then, after the Games, the public) to swim in it.
“I don’t want to jump in, do I?” he asks, as we watch the river rise, all the color of tea after recent storms. He is heaven from me
Swimming in the Seine has been banned since 1923 due to the dangers of pollution. The £1.2bn effort to clear the waterway for the Olympics (a target date organizers fear) is part of mayor Anne Hidalgo’s ambitious ecological plans for the capital, which have also involved crossing the capital with cycle lanes. The city loves a revolution in two-wheeled head throes. Paris is gone from the Netherlands.
“You can ride everywhere,” coos Communier, who is happy to see the back of the smut-belching vehicles that once idled around his booth. “It was all about buses and taxis before,” he says, pointing to the nearby bike lane that eases after rush hour. “It’s better now.”
The Parisian approach to driving – that is to say, cavalier – has migrated to the city’s bike lanes. They are chaotic places. A bit lawless. But the people of Paris took to them in droves, which is a matter of great concern to some columnists. Despite what critics say, the bike lanes have opened up Paris to tourists willing to pedal.
While Brits once had to enter the bowels of the city at Gare du Nord to get on the dreary Metro – or face being ripped off at the hands of cabbies – they can now hop on a Lime bike and ride along kir royale in Montmartre before the Eurostar engines are cooled.
Paris syndrome?
Communier sends me into the day of maturity with a free ring of the Eiffel Tower to give to my son. As I ride along the new cycle paths along the river, past Notre Dame Cathedral – reconstruction work in progress – I come across it. Could it be an attack of Paris syndrome?
I refer to the condition – which is known to affect some tourists, mostly Asian – that Paris fails to meet its high expectations. Some people reported feeling physically ill as a result. Apparently, the Japanese embassy has a 24-hour hotline for nationals displaying signs. This is not what I was able to confirm, but in a way it is better maybe it is still a mystery.
Paris syndrome is back in the news after an American influencer described such symptoms in a tearful video about France that has gone viral. A more likely scenario for me, I understand, is that I haven’t eaten a vegetable for two days. Sadly, greens are not served as regular plates on many of the city’s dinner plates.
Interesting concept though, Paris syndrome. I discuss it with two American students over coffee outside the Shakespeare and Company bookshop on the leafy left bank of the Seine. Abbey Hurt and Gabrielle Fjellman are over from North Carolina for spring break and most of their friends are “partying in Miami”.
“I always thought of Paris as a romantic city,” says Hurt, who is here for the first time. Is he living up to her expectations? “I think so,” she says, looking around the leafy square at people reading books and sipping coffee in the spring sun. “Especially this space.”
“Culture is nurturing thought,” says Fjellman. She quotes a line from one of her favorite books, Eliminate the rush by John Mark Comer. “He writes about ‘letting our souls catch up with our bodies’. I think Paris fosters this idea.”
Maybe, but they’re not all lazy cafes in leafy squares, beckoning beret-wearing bookworms across the aisles. Paris has many of the usual major drawbacks, as well as some of its own spooky neighborhoods, notoriously rude waiters and rotten smells that come from nowhere to assault your nostrils.
And, of course, plenty of people want to give their souls the slip. The night before in Pigalle, along the seedy Boulevard de Clichy, I unknowingly entered a drug deal near the Moulin Rouge.
Around me, men exchanged €50 notes for bags of powder, and a bald beef jerky tried to convince me to watch a sex show. In a sign that tastes were changing and that Pigalle was gentrifying, Bouillon Pigalle, a modern bistro serving French classics at un-Parisian prices, was the hottest show of the night. The queue for a table ran up the street.
Unabated creativity
For all its faults, and despite the gap between expectations and reality, Paris is still brimming with enviable creative energy. In a bar in the ninth arrondissement, I meet my Paris friend Esther, who works part-time in a nearby theater between writing the play and doing the music.
The French government, she explains, as a waiter brings over a beer, increases her salary through the temporary worker scheme for artists, which supports creative people to do their thing. My mind goes bleakly to Birmingham, the second city in England, which cut its arts budget to zero.
This creative freedom is what makes Paris Paris. That’s why Oscar Wilde is buried here. And it is still tangible today. You see it not only in the big cultural institutions, like the Louvre or the new floating arts center, Quai de la Photo, but in the guitars going over shoulders on the Metro, paintings painted in parks, dog-eared notebooks in cafes.
Paris still fosters creativity, in a way that most other Western cities do not. And it will take more than bed bugs or layers under bike lanes to reduce its drag.
Basics
Gavin Haines traveled by Eurostar from London to Paris and was a guest at the Grand Hôtel du Palais Royal (doubles from £375 per night), a short walk from the Jardin du Palais Royale, where the magnolia trees are in full bloom.
See our expert guide to spending the perfect weekend in Paris.
