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 expectations before I came to France. I decided to come to Paris on vacation. The reason I chose 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, 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 totally different scenery after a couple of 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 are a lot of bistros, and one can commonly observe 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 were 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 were hungry and wanted to eat out on a budget, I would 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 a 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’s (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 a refrigerated sandwich(which let me tell you aren’t really that good and doesn’t certainly don’t fill you up).
There are a ton of scamming gypsies all over Paris; they congregate by the tourist attraction, usually asking tourists 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 saw 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 fooled that she was deaf and had me feeling a slight remorse for her. I witnessed 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 a great and magnificent city. But hey, I guess it all depends on what you’re looking for. 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 