Paris makes me happy in general. I love the Tuileries (who doesn’t), the creamy buildings with their mansard roofs, the perfect bread, the fashions, the wide, elegant boulevards, the history, and the Evian water ad that plays in a certain public washroom I may have visited recently. My heart soars as I enter the Marais and try to decide which to do first: sit in a cafe basking in the sun and watching the parade, or heading straight to the shops, like Luka Luna where I want to buy everything at once but content myself with one thing, once…
The air in Paris makes me happy, polluted, perfumed, and acrid though it may be with 2,000 years’ worth of human sweat, strain and striving. Call me crazy, but the Champs Elysees is kind of impressive. Alright, alright, it blows my mind every time. So damn grand, so full of itself, big enough to accommodate the millions of tourists who flock there for their dose of grandiose beauty.
There are things Paris doesn’t have, or at least they’re not immediately apparent. Recycling bins, for one. I don’t mean to be churlish, but it wouldn’t kill them to provide bins for glass and plastic refuse. It could, I swear it could actually enhance the joy of a visit to the town, not to mention the lives of Parisians themselves. Just sayin’…
But here’s something I saw that enhanced my already giddy Paris trip:
A sign letting you know where to charge your electric car! Autolib is a car sharing service similar to Communauto in Montreal that offers electric vehicles. And just look at that sign, pointing the way to a better future. Now if the city would just offer its gazillion tourists a place to toss their Fanta bottles, my cup of joy would seriously overflow…