From May 23, 2017, until June 4, 2017, I was in Paris France. It was my second time ever outside the United States( The only other country I’ve been to was Japan) and my first time in France. I didn’t really have any expectation before I came to France. I decided to come to Paris as a vacation. The reason I choose Paris is that for the past year I’ve been teaching myself French. So I thought to myself France would probably be the best place to get some practice in. So here goes my review of the entire trip(from of course my own personal opinion)
Paris I found to be pretty boring and really expensive to the sum of my experience there. The entire city looks virtually the same with its cliche three to four story buildings. I found myself sometimes in new parts of the city wondering to myself “if I’ve been here before”. You can walk the city for hours yet see the same old canals and cobbled streets. Now I’m from New York City and I’m used to experiencing total different scenery after a couple hours of walking. In New York, neighborhoods can look totally different from each other and have a totally different vibe altogether. This is not true of Paris where the entire city can be pretty uniform in both scenery and vibe.
Now the second strife I had with paris is how extremely expensive it was(particularly the food). In Paris, there is a lot of bistros and one can commonly observers Parisians eating outside many of these bistros. I myself ate at some of these places and yes the food is good, but I soon found out bistros where the only places one could find good quality food (of course the exception is if you cook your own dinner). In New York if I was hungry and wanted to eat out on a budget I have a plethora of options, maybe I can go to the local deli and order a hero for four dollars or maybe go to a Chinese takeout and order meal for less than six dollars. This is not true of Paris where you will be hard pressed to find any fast food joints. I’ve seen about two McDonald(which were not as good as the McDonald’s in America in my opinion) there are no food trucks in Paris. The only option I found myself taking if I wanted to eat for cheap was to visit a supermarket and buy some refrigerated sandwich(which let me tell you aren’t really that good and doesn’t certainly doesn’t fill you up).
There are a ton of scamming gypsies all over Paris, they congregate by the tourist attraction, usually asking tourist if they would like to sign some form and then asking them for some Euros. Here’s one example, my second day I went to visit The world famous Musee d’Orsay(It contain the famous Van Gogh self-portrait) I was across the street from the museum when a woman who I thought was deaf(as she played the role) came up to me with some forms with a pledge to donate to some bogus institution for the deaf. I smiled and signed to her that I wasn’t interested in making any pledges. As I crossed the street I see here going up to two females and immediately conversing with them. I must tell you I was a little upset at this revelation of deceit. She had me perfectly fool that she was deaf and had me feeling a slight remorseful for her. I witness more gypsy scamming besides this such as an old gypsy woman asking children at a McDonald’s for food, the children proceeded to give her food, she smiled and took the food. I walked outside ten minutes later to find this woman with a bag full of bread( I guess that wasn’t enough to satiate her treacherous hunger). I also notice that virtually all the homeless in Paris are in fact gypsies and they can be seen sitting on cardboard(sometimes entire families including children) and begging for money.
Overall I believe Paris is overtly hyped up as this great and magnificent city. But hey I guess it all depends on what you’re looking for. Me.. myself I am more of a big city cosmopolitan kind of guy. I like to walk around a large city and be in awe like I am in New York and I was in Tokyo.
Da Joanis Project 