Bienvenue dans la Septième

 

We moved.

By itself, this isn't remarkable. We started the pandemic in Oakland, and in the interim, had two different apartments in San Francisco, and two in Paris.

What's different is that this time we went against our instincts and moved towards the tourists. From our experiences in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles, tourist areas tend to be the tackiest, most-over-priced, and dirtiest parts of town--and also the places where the food is the worst and you are most likely to be mugged or have your your car windows smashed for whatever "valuables" are inside (usually phone chargers and empty soda cups from what I can tell). So we always tried to avoid living near them--sometimes unsuccessfully. North Beach and the approach to Lombard Street failed notably on that score.

But after about a year in Paris, it started to dawn on us that over here, tourists flock to (or are subtly steered towards) sites that are sources of French national pride or are symbolic of France itself. In this respect, tourist areas tend to be the best cared for and closely managed by the city and national government, even amidst the constant onslaught of crowds and the garbage they produce. Yes, there are tacky souvenir shops and you'll pay a bit more to sit shoulder-to-shoulder at a nearby café. But there is also constant trash removal, daily street cleaning, efficient public transportation and traffic-control, and visible efforts to discourage any criminality more serious than games of three-card monty.

This is in contrast to urban US tourist places such as Pier 39, Times Square, or Hollywood Boulevard--which were developed and conceived specifically as zones for separating rubes from their money, with public safety and cleanliness an afterthought if considered at all. Maybe the National Mall in Washington DC is the exception that proves the rule.

So we moved to the 7th Arrondissement, a stone's throw from the Eiffel Tower, Champs de Mars, and the Hôtel des Invalides, and along the tourist migration routes to and from the Trocadero and the Jardins des Tuileries. Only by moving inside the Louvre or Notre Dame could we have put ourselves more deeply in the belly of the beast.

Home sweet home.

And, so far, it's been what we expected. There are certainly a lot of people milling around, particularly on warm nights when the lawns of the Champs de Mars fill up with picnickers waiting for the lights of the Tower to twinkle (10:00 PM on the dot in the summer, or 22h00 in the French style). But in Paris, there always seems to be a lot of people, all the time, anywhere you go. The 7th Arr. also has many wide sidewalks along tree-lined streets, so the neighborhood seems to handle the throngs much better than some of the medieval farm routes in the 16th Arr. could handle even the locals.

It can also be remarkably quiet at times--early in the mornings, for example. I guess that's true anywhere, but the Champs de Mars covers so much area that it gives the neighborhood an organically low density. It also cuts down on the number of auto and bus thoroughfares, so we get very little traffic noise during commute times. Combine that with a narrow, one-way, 19th century street and double-paned glass and it's much quieter than our residential neighborhood in the 16th. It's certainly cleaner. There seem to be just as many dogs as in the 16th, but a lot less dog shit on the grass and the sidewalks. I doubt that dog walkers here are more fastidious about picking up. More likely, constant efforts by city crews to keep this part of town clean are to thank.

Or maybe the neighbors here are different. I certainly hear a lot of American English spoken, probably by tourists. But I suspect that there is somewhat of an enclave in the neighborhood (the American Library in Paris and the Protestant, interdenominational Église Américaine de Paris should have given me two clues). I don't claim that Americans represent the high-water mark for pooper-scooping, but every displaced Parisian dog owner would probably provide some advantage on that aspect of daily life.

There is also a bit of former-Eastern Bloc representation in this part of town. The brutalist, windowless stonework and chrome minarets of the 21st century Russian Orthodox Diocese dominates one corner of the Quai Branley, directly across from the Bulgarian Embassy. A bit nearer to us is the formidable-looking Romanian Embassy. More than one American in the neighborhood has volunteered that they get "super creeped out" by the comings and goings of the embassy's night caretaker. I've yet to see him, and wonder if all the cemeteries and gothic architecture in Paris starts to work on people's imaginations after a while.

"Children of the night, what music we make!"

The Romanian Cultural Institute is also nearby, and was likely responsible for a recent exhibition by U-Banca Transilvania, a professional basketball team from Cluj-Napoca in the Carpathian Mountains. Sadly, I didn't attend the game, but did catch sight of the team bus departing at sunrise. A supposedly knowledgeable insider insists that the team's locker room has no mirrors, but, again, that sounds like superstition.

Blacked out windows deprived us of any glimpses of the Transylvanian players.

Some of the other neighbors we only see through windows.

Since we only moved into the neighborhood at the end of July, the Parisian August vacation exodus has kept from really getting to know the neighborhood. A lot of the boulangers, butcher shops, and restaurants are closed for the entire month, and many vendors at most of the nearby farmers markets have also stopped showing up. But what we've found so far makes me hopeful that we won't be giving up too much of what we liked about the 16th Arr. Maybe I should have been going against my instincts all along.