It’s not really true what they say that all big cities are alike. At least, that’s not what I have found. To me, each seems to have its own character; a certain vision of the city that like it or not becomes an icon for the whole country in which it resides.
There is New York—hot dogs and baseball with its “get out of my way because I’m going somewhere,” attitude, even though you’re never really sure where it is going. Then there is London, with its haughty pride and stiff upper lip kind of stoicism that seems to say whatever you do to me I’ll beat you in the end and still have my coat on and my tie straight. There is Dublin, that haunting siren of a city that stays in the back of your mind long after you have left her, the image of a poor working man dressed in cable knit sweater and Paddy Cap sitting long hours at a bar drinking a strange, brown liquid or strolling across a moor fighting the wind from the North Atlantic while a high pitched whistle plays a lilting tune in the background. There is also Cairo, old, fat and dirty with it’s thirty-eight million people still alive and thriving having taken and subdued every gale-force wind that history has thrown at it, survived and often prospered from it.
And then there is Paris, always a lady even when bawdy and sexy, like a woman so incredibly beautiful that her beauty catches and holds your eye even when her hair is drenched from the rain and her make-up is streaming down her face. Paris with its bright lights and glittering style that says copy me if you like but you’ll never be my equal. Paris with its laid back manner, its pride, and its amazing resilience.
We spent our first day in Paris escorted by our extended tour host, AMA Waterways. They did their best to give us a great experience in this amazing city despite the rainy weather. All the days we prayed for and needed rain at home; now it comes when we were wanting blue skies and nice temperatures. On well!
We boarded a bus (my least favorite way of seeing a city) and our tour host began to tell us about the city. She was British with a distinctively British accent even though she has lived in Paris for over thirty years—married a Parisian, she said. All along the way, there was a non-stop talk full of facts and stories about buildings, architects, blocked-up windows, historical events, and everything else you could imagine. Judy and I were seated in the front seat and every now and then as she finished a story or an interesting tidbit, she would turn around and look me in the eye with a discerning smile. It was a little disconcerting since I felt like a student under the teacher’s careful gaze wondering what I had done wrong to attract her attention—guess my guilty nature was just coming out. A time or two, I almost blurted out, “What?”
Truth is, she really never stopped because there is so much here—you can’t take a single corner, building or area for granted. It’s all full of history, remembrances, and episodes in the DNA of western culture that makes us who we are. I felt from the beginning that what we were seeing was not just about Paris or about France, but about everything we know, believe and hold dear and how it came to be. Perhaps bits and pieces of the puzzle that has created the whole world that we have today—both good and bad.
We rested for a while in the afternoon, then off again in the evening for another tour of the city, this time to dine at Montmartre, one of our favorite places in the city. Once again we had a tour guide who, like the one in the morning, told us non-stop everything we could possibly need to know about every place we passed. She was a true Parisian, speaking English (at least our American version of it) with French accents, syllable divisions and the occasional lift in tone that you often hear French women use. She knew so much and just kept quoting facts and figures; I wondered how she could ever remember it all. Obviously, she has a mental capacity comparable to an IBM mainframe, while my capacity doesn’t even come up to the old Apple computers of the 80’s.
Even in the rain with the gloomy skies, it was a wonderful day highlighted with a closing celebration, almost a worship experience, watching the glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower before heading back to our hotel. Gil Pender in “Midnight in Paris,” says that Paris is most beautiful in the rain. I’m not sure about the “most” part, but she certainly is still strikingly beautiful, even in the rain.
Leave a Reply