September 21-24

Some random observations after a week and a half here…

There’s no doubt that the French have given up expecting Americans to learn English and gone entirely the other way.  For example, four years ago we bought weekly metro passes. I made the request in French and spent the first half the conversation stumbling through to purchase them. This time, just about the entire conversation is in English.  I suspect it’s something about the next generation having embraced English as an expression of being a global citizen. Or maybe it’s that the bulk of the internet is in English. Or that people everywhere have given up hoping English speakers learning their languages.

A side benefit of so much English being spoken is that people seem even friendlier. Which is NOT to say that we’ve ever experienced the French as unfriendly to Americans.

It’s been a lot more crowded on the streets. We’re not yet ready to rule this as: a)a good economy leading to more visitors to Paris, b)the weather being great, c)more people living in Paris, or d)spending more of our time in a more touristic neighborhood.

Emmy is over jetlag.  I don’t write this to dote on Emmy (although if you’re reading this you might already think we dote on her).  More that we were just surprised at how much jetlag she’s had. The first week or so, after Maxine took her out for her morning bathroom walk, she’d go back to bed!  Given that dogs sleep so much as a matter of course, we were surprised that she seemed to need even more sleep.

Mass commercialism is here!  International brands have long been here to a greater or lesser extent (first time I was in a Starbucks here was in 2006). But, I’m to the point of wondering about the viability of one of those Paris pastimes, shopping.  We took a walk Saturday to the neighborhood where we’d stayed in 2006. Back then, there was a mid-sized covered (permanent) food market called the Marche St.Germain across the street from our apartment. The building is still there and half the space is still dedicated to food stalls, but the other half is consumed by large stores from just 2 retailers, Apple and Uniqlo.  

On a related note, VAT (sales tax) here runs 20%,  If you spend over 175E at any one store, you can get back 12% back when you leave the country.  But, if shopping is ever more international, what point is there to buying something in France (especially something below the 175E threshold) which carries a 20% tax burden when at home there’s no sales tax.  Food for thought.

The Ryder Cup is taking place outside of Paris this week.  There is a huge screen set up in front of the Hotel de Ville for people to watch the competition and various golf-related activities on the plaza.
 



On the way back to the Seine river boat from the Ryder Cup exhibition and demo area, we passed a church on the end of the street and decided to go in and check it out.  This church is not one of those “must see” in Paris sights. Yet, it was very very impressive. In most other cities we imagine it would be one of the top things to check out, yet here it was just church, at the end of a street, almost hidden by other buildings. Beautiful!
And from the boat cruise.


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