Marketplace

By WISE OWL on Nov 6, 2010 | Reply

Julia Childs has a somewhat romanticised view of Paris. It is a beautiful town in its centre with splendid monuments, handsome buildings, fantastic art galleries, multiple bridges across the Seine and its banks, numerous squares and open spaces, and many beautiful parks and public gardens. However, like all capitals it has some dingy and down at heel areas, and some slums on the outskirts, though they may still look picturesque to tourists as they are different from the American style of buildings.
There are hundreds of restaurants, some quaint, some less so, but relatively few fast food /take away outlets compared to America. Even the best known Mac Donald’s is housed in a striking Art Nouveau building and is quite classy.
Parisians do not have a reputation for being "lovely" people as they are continuously hassled by tourists and have become resentful of being accosted or delayed at every corner, so they can be very terse. Taxi drivers who live on their nerves all day are indiscriminately short with everyone including their own co-citizens."Lovely" people are in larger numbers in the provinces. In Paris it is rather difficult for outsiders to break into society and make friends and it can be a very lonely life if you have no acquaintances, friends or relatives near by. It is even more so if you are a foreigner and do not speak the language well.
There also are the problems of a large city that has attracted many immigrants, both legal and illegal , and more recently an influx of less desirable elements from Eastern Europe, that have given Paris a bad name and a reputation for pickpockets, traders in cheap, fake or shoddy goods, street riots and cars set on fire or vandalised.

There still are some picturesque traditional street markets, but the best of that kind, except for the particularly well known Parisian antique markets, are often found in provincial towns. Yes, there are some big malls and Centres Commerciaux , but on the whole most of these tend to be on the periphery or in suburbs. There are several very large department stores of the same type as Macy’s in the centre of Paris and a huge commercial complex at Chatelet-les-Halles, but no Walmarts. On the whole individual shops and small boutiques are still the norm, but it is a commercial city in the sense that it has to cater for thousands of visitors so there are many hotels and it is also the centre for big names in luxury goods. Since it is the main administrative and political city in France as well, it is an extremely expensive city to live in altogether and good accommodation at a reasonable price is extremely difficult to find.
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By Cabal on Nov 6, 2010 | Reply

Paris is two cities at the same time, the speedy, noisy, crowded modern one, the capital city of the fifth world economy (depending the year) with modern shops, restaurants, malls to deal with 2 millions inhabitants, 12 millions in the metropolitan area, and 24 millions visitors a year, and the quaint one still tucked in corners, hidden from sight to discover while walking leisurely in the back streets, with the small shops, the small restaurants, some of them very good, some of them terrible. You also have some very nice markets, noisy, full of delicious smells, like the one at Bastille, or Monge, or the covered markets where you go buy fresh food, which I do almost every Sunday morning.
However as said by Wise Owl it is not a city without blemishes, some areas are rather run down on the outskirts mostly, the subburbs can be very bad… But the old Paris within the city limit can still be found in small touches if you take the time to look for it.
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Parisian for 25 years, still in love with the city