Darcy's Paris Blog

Observations on Parisian living

Well, another day of rain. Bummer. Jimi and I were supposed to meet up early afternoon to see the Bonnard exhibit, but as it turns out he was too hungover from last night. Just after I left his place, he and his friend opened a bottle of wine, which turned out to be the fatal flaw. Aren’t we too old for this now?! Before I knew how sick he was, I still headed down to his neighborhood, just to walk around and check it out, and besides, if he did feel well enough to go out, at least it’d be easy for us to meet up. Oh, well, next time.

Since I didn’t end up having much on the agenda today, I’ll use share some other observations on French living.
#1. Mandy, you will be happy to hear that a lot of the public toilets on the streets are free now. You said you thought they shouldn’t be paid; now they’re not. Hooray.
#2. They clean the streets with water here, which seems both completely futile and completely wasteful. The Parisians seem to be somewhat environmentally conscious about some things – I see people hauling all of their glass down to the one recycling bin in my neighborhood, and Sophie’s 8-year-old was learning about recycling in school – yet they insist on cleaning their streets by running little rivers down the curbs. The theory is that it’ll take the trash along with it, but it neither does that nor does it do anything for trash on the sidewalks or the middle of the streets. Therefore it still requires guys in fluorescent bibs with plastic brooms to sweep stuff into the little rivers they’ve got flowing down the curbs. Go figure.
#3. They have cars here that you can drive without a license. Here’s how it works. If you get caught by a speed camera or you get a ticket while driving, you get a certain number of points deducted. Everyone starts out with a certain number of points, and when you’re down to 0, you lose your license. In the mall at lunch once I saw a teeny car advertised with a big sticker saying you could drive it without a license. Emmanuel explained to me that if you lose your license, this is the car you have to get. So apparently when you lose your license, it doesn’t mean that you can’t drive; it just means that you have to get a newer, smaller car. Again, go figure.

posted by Darcy @ 10:34 PM