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THE SOFT PARADE

I arrived in Paris in the middle of a summer heatwave that had engulfed the majority of Western Europe. A mass of hot air moving north from Africa had driven temperatures up in Spain, Portugal, Britain and France in recent days.  Two days prior, Wednesday, July 1st, the city had reached 39.7, officially the hottest July day since 1947 and the second hottest since ‘Meteo France’ began their record keeping in 1873. 

 

Mindful of 2003, when thousands lost their lives during a similar abnormality of extreme heat, Paris officials opened special air-conditioned rooms up for the public and the city’s inhabitants reached out to aid the elderly and vulnerable and to warn of health risks in the sweltering conditions.

 

The same day that I arrived, power outages, fires and traffic disruption in and out of Paris through track warping near the Saint-Lazare train station were all a result of the swooning heat. An automated platform announcement at Gare du Nord reminded commuters to carry and drink plenty of water.

 

Across the channel in London, the Wimbledon tennis tournament was disrupted as Britain's Met Office recorded their hottest July day since records began with 36.7 posted at Heathrow airport.

 

Shortly after leaving Charles de Gaulle, a mid afternoon arrival from Dubai, the Paris barometer officially hit the 40 degree mark. We were informed that this was so by our charming shuttle driver from Las Palmas, whose English was adequately poor, his French excessively worse, even than my own, which I admit, I took some encouragement from. 

 

My first time in Paris, I could only liken or collate the heat to experience from my own memory banks and at this juncture, I had not stood in the full sun long enough to make judgement or comparison. My initial impressions from an air-conditioned cab though, were of the people outside feeling it and with the rise in temperature, also temper.

 

Those who have spent time in Paris will know that traffic rules and regulations, as such, do not appear to apply down the narrower lanes that link the main thoroughfare and congestion means an excessive amount or horn-sounding, angry gesticulations and ruthless pincer movements when behind the wheel.

 

After almost 40 hours in the air or in transit from the other side of the globe, I too was tired and terse, the aim being by now to as quickly as possible relax and saturate my seismic thirst. I had promised myself that I would not twist the top off the single malt I had purchased duty free, until inside the apartment which I had rented for four nights. Beer advertisements on buildings or shop windows I passed, were of little help in taking my mind from my alcoholic machinations.

 

Barometers of all concerned were stretched or exacerbated further by our friendly driver, who smiled and portrayed a most positive and pleasant demeanour, but appeared to have got himself somewhat lost, or perhaps misguided by a lesbian couple from Canada, riding in the back.

 

They had given him the address of a hotel and - between devoid lines of misinterpretation - he would end up driving twice around the same 1km block - reliving once again all the aforementioned angst and temperance struggle - trying to establish the correct GPS of the poorly signposted Hotel Zora. 

 

The issue though, was not so much in radial circumference (in fact it was a tremendous way to take in new surroundings with an impromptu guided tour), but more the late Friday afternoon traffic, unbelievably more chaotic than I had experienced even in New Delhi, juxtaposed with the dizzying heat and a ticking clock. 

 

To get back around that 1km block took a full 45 minutes. The driver pulled up to the identical spot he had three-quarters of an hour hence and told the couple for the second time that this was the accommodation they and all of us had been looking for. He on his GPS tracker, the rest of us by hanging our heads out of the shuttle, trying to catch a glimpse of some sort of signage. It still was not clear by any form of identification, but he insisted that he was correct in his assumption that this was it.

 

The other passenger was from Texas and there had been absolutely no pleasing her from the outset. Although she had been friendly and chatty enough, she had too much the all-American drama queen about her, tantrum’s intensifying as our journey wound through Parisienne streets of the 2nd arrondissement.

 

She let loose verbally again at the driver as the couple exited the shuttle van. The elder (from New Orleans) motioned to the younger (Vancouver), to collect the bags while she raced inside to check that where they had been delivered to was actually the correct Hotel. The younger, only half listening to instruction, struggled up the few steps of the main lobby with the bags and into the air-conditioned reception, a few seconds behind her partner.

 

When pressed on the issue, the driver was adamant that he would wait for them to return and confirm that all was in fact correct and as it should be, but he did not. As soon as the couple were in the building and out of sight, glad to be rid of the pair, he hastily sped off down the narrow lane and out of sight before either would have had any chance to act. 

 

This set off Miss Texas, whom I was now in a dogfight with over who was next to be dropped off. The driver indicated that my destination was only a couple of blocks away and in the correct traffic flow and he was going to take the most fluid option available to him. This was of some relief to myself, but none what-so-ever to my co-passenger.  

 

After another fractious altercation between driver and Texan, at an intersection where traffic had come to a an unmitigated stand still, I disembarked the cab and within seconds found myself standing outside of and staring at the doorway of number 8 rue Poissonnière, 75002 Paris, completely recognisable to me through both photograph and the google maps system which I had employed before beginning my long journey.

 

And this was just the first European door. It was to become not only symbolic, largely by disambiguation, it astounded me and I found it incredible how one tactile object could be so divergent. 

 

It was like Narnia; outside of it was the real world, in this case Paris hot and pacy, opulent and depraved. Inside was a sanctuary, quiet and cool, alluring and calming. One had only to punch in the correct code and instant escape happened faster than in the transporter room of the Starship Enterprise.

 

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After extensive research into which possibility would suit my needs best, I had booked the apartment online earlier in the year, March to be exact. I was delighted to discover that all photographs and descriptions of the place appeared accurate and it was indeed a real little charmer.

 

The apartment itself was located in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, a relaxed 20 minute downhill amble to the right bank of the Seine, a very trendy part of the city as it were, brimming with restaurants, cafe’s and bars, bakeries, fish stores, cheese shops and floral stands.

 

Although the 2nd arrondissement also houses the majority of the city’s business activities, with a large number of banking headquarters as well as the Sentier, a renowned textile district, it was Rue Montorgueil that held most intrigue. This is the street where Parisians choose to socialise, and one made famous by a Monet painting with the title in it’s name, ‘La rue Montorgueil à Paris’, which itself hangs in the Musee d’Orsay. 

 

As I had arrived at the height of summer with hundreds and thousands of other tourists, rue Montorgueil was positively pumping throughout most of the day, but most certainly until very late in the night and beyond, as locals and foreigners soaked in the ambience of the season and delighted in an epicurism and socialising of singularly the highest order.

 

And despite their being a plethora of International cuisine on offer, with Italian being among the more popular of non-French options, it was certainly the indigenous dishes on offer that held genuine appeal, most notably the Escargot, of which I have always been particularly partial to. 

 

And one particular restaurant I dined at one evening, ‘La Grille Montorgueil’ (who correctly promoted their fare as ‘Française Traditionnelle’) was nothing short of sensational. Aside the divinity of their own escargot, the ‘Planchette Montorgueil’ offering fine cheeses and charcuterie, was the finest of which I’d partaken.

 

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My first night in Paris was rounded out by a pleasant stroll down to the Seine, principally to stretch ones legs after such a long flight and to simply catch a glimpse of one of the worlds most notorious urban rivers. I negotiated my way to ‘Pont Neuf’, which although in French is ‘New Bridge’, is actually the oldest standing bridge that crosses the Seine, at the western end of ‘Ile de la Cite’, the island in the middle of the river that was the very heart of medieval Paris.

 

Construction of the bridge began in earnest in 1578, initiated by the last king of the Valois dynasty, Henri III, who naturally laid the first stone. The new bridge would be financed in a unique, but previously untested manner, when his successor, Henri IV, levied a tax on every cask of wine brought into Paris, prompting city historian, Henri Sauval to state; “the rich and drunkards paid for this urban work”.

 

The bridge proved essential to the flow of traffic across Paris, a process by which the Right Bank became fully integrated as part of the metropolitan. Long before the Eiffel Tower existed, the ‘Pont Neuf' became not only the worlds first major modern ‘tourist attraction’, but Parisians immediately turned the central monument of Henri IV into a popular meeting place, the first truly communal entertainment space in the city. 

 

On the metal bridge that surrounds three sides of the statue, is an ode to the modern-esque phenomenon of ‘love padlocking’, a practice allegedly equally adored and despised by municipal authorities across many European cities.

 

On the one hand a tourist attraction and therefore an earner, on the other tagged as ‘litter’. There is a cost to the state for their removal and constant concerns over structural damage to the bridges, owing to the cumulative weight of the locks.

 

In June, shortly before I had arrived, city council workmen had begun to cut down the locks at ‘Pont des Arts’ (believed to house over a million locks, weighing in excess of 45 tons) after part of the parapet collapsed and following years of complaints from Parisian rate payers.

 

I retraced my steps back along Rue Montorgueil, stopping en route back to my apartment for a Mojito, a tonic required to aid and abet sleep that was badly needed. Generally, I don’t suffer from jet lag and knew that a deep and efficient sleep would be sufficient to rejuvenate mind and body .

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