Paris When It Doesn't Sizzle

So living in Paris seems like a dream, right? Then you do it and you feel like you're living a dream, right? Well, one of the reasons it feels like you're living a dream is that crazy things happen all the time that just shouldn't be normal. Here's just a few thoughts to throw out.

Weekend stroll
Last Saturday I took a lovely stroll through Paris. As soon as I got off the metro, there was a jazz brass group playing and a crowd of happy tourists cheering them on. Not 15 feet away, I ran into a man playing La Vie en Rose on his accordion. "This is Paris," I thought. The walk continued on for a while, including a few random turns that led me right back to the main boulevard and eventually to the Musee d'Orsay. I've been trying to get there this whole trip, but the line, can you believe it, was a crowd that stretched across the whole plaza. Then I walked along the Seine (thinking of Gene Kelley dancing to Gershwin in An American in Paris), then on to Place Dauphine and Pont Neuf. And what happened next? The rain started to fall. There's something you can't live without in Paris: cold rain and sunshine.

Easter at Notre Dame
Though I am not Catholic, I attended mass at the breath-taking Notre Dame Cathedral for Easter Sunday. It was a wonderful moment to be standing in the crowd of tourists and locals waiting for a church to open its doors. I don't think I will ever experience anything like that again. Everyone stood so close, you could smell their Parisian perfume (not always a pleasant smell). Add to that the sound of American teenagers on vacation with their parents and school groups. Whose idea was it to bring them there? In any case, this was the first and hopefully last time I will ever be pushed into a cathedral again.

The mass itself was supposedly the international service, but only the ending part was multilingual. I felt sorry that the priest had to speak English because he clearly didn't want to try it at all. He almost forgot what he was supposed to be repeating at one point! But who wouldn't? We Americans seem to make life more awkward for everyone in the world because they can't speak our language but they sure do try. I was just excited to be there, in such a historical place. How many centuries of people have come there to worship, and we are just sitting there waiting for mass to be done so we can take pictures.

Miscellaneous
And then there are those things you least expect... A man urinating on a flowerbed on Boulevard Montparnasse. Wearing hospital booties to visit a private home for architecture class. Seeing one of your friends standing on the quai of the metro as you ride past. Sunshine after a rainstorm. The Eiffel Tower in your direct line of vision.

So maybe Paris is greatest when you don't have any standards for it at all. Just like any big city, the beauty lies in the most random moments.