The weather in Paris seems to be unbearable.
I am going to Paris in a couple of weeks and was wondering if anyone knows what has air conditioning.
Restaurants,Museums,Stores?
Thanks

Most places (museums/stores) have a/c and most of 4 star and up hotels. But when u travel in september you will find a lovely city with moderate temperatures between 19 and 27 degree Celsius. Weather in that period of the year is mostly stabyl dry and fine with clear and dry nights with temperatures between 11 and 18 degress Celsius.

The temperatures we have the last weeks and stay surely on for the next 7 to ten days are absolutely exceptional for this part of the world.

The main weather conditions are driven from moisture, wet and windy atlantic low systems - which are now staying (thanx to the high pressure system "Helene&quot west of england.

I just spent an hour or two combing my Michelin red guide to Paris, marking the restaurants that have air conditioning. Unfortunately so many of the quaint old bistros I was hoping to go to don't have it. Add to that that many, especially the old timers, are closed for all or most of August, and your list of places to do meals, pretty well makes itself up.

Even if AC is present, that does not mean the place will be what you think of as cool or even tolerable. The French like it hot and they set thermostats to reflect this. This is the hottest summer in decades. Be prepared to deal with it.

Again I would ask the author to tell as if he will visit paris in august or september - he will definitely get not sweat when he will arrive after the end of august !

I'm not clear how you are so sure of that statement, confidential. Perhaps the hottest few days I've ever had in Paris was the first three days in October a few years ago. Unusual, sure, but true nonetheless. We were in Paris for 8 days just a week ago. The first four to five days were very pleasant (except for some rain). We had an air-conditioned apt, but didn't even turn it on until the fifth day when it did turn warm. When we left last Sunday, August 3, it was indeed getting hot. You just never know. But it sounds like we lucked out with a few days of the most pleasant temperatures of the summer in Paris.

As to restaurants, I was surprised the couple of times we ate inside (twice in supposedly air-conditioned restaurants) how hot it was, even though it was quite pleasant outside. I had sweat dripping down my back.

September offers days with temps in the high 20's and it is quite possible to be very hot in September. For example, Sept 14 2000 it was 78 degrees.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/...lyHistory.html

again - only exceptional - so how are the chances ?

Many large museums do not have a/c (Louvre, Orsay I think)--their thick walls help keep the heat out, it will depend on what the crowds are like

some restaurants do, many don't
Small shops often don't

None of the probabilities will matter to you if it is very hot inside and you go into a place that doesn't have it
Good luck

I was listening to a French radio station (France Info)this evening. They were saying "In Paris, many people are visiting museums such as Le Louvre and D'Orsay in order to escape from the heat outside AND because these places are air-conditionned."

Hi all,

MFK Fisher describes in one of her books going to a museum and seeing a painting that struck her as extremely erotic.

It was a young woman lying naked on a bed in total disarray, with one leg hanging over the side of the bed. (She described it much better than I can.)

She then told about a night in Marseille, after a Sirocco blowing in from Africa, when it was so hot at 2 or 3 in the morning that she couldn't sleep. Tossing about, trying to find the slightest breeze, she suddenly realized that she had taken up the smae position as the woman in the painting.

Was at Louvre yesterday and D'Orsay two days ago. For the record, D'Orsay is air conditioned and quite comfortable throughout. Louvre is air conditioned in some rooms such as the Italian paintings which contains the Mona Lisa and not air conditioned in other rooms such as the French paintings. The rooms that are not air conditioned are like saunas. Forget about thick walls keeping the heat out. That is wishful thinking and with all due respect, totally wrong.

so, I guessed I missed the two museums that had it because when I was there a bit ago, none of the museums I was in had it. I don't remember any stores having it either, so guess I don't agree with confidential that most places have it. Don't agree with VoyageurFacile at all either that the thick stone walls have no effect on the heat. It certainly is cooler in those kind of places than out in the sun or many other buildings to me. I live in an older brick house with thick walls and my temps are always about 10 degrees cooler than outside or other people's wood homes.

Okay -- an example, I was in both the Jewish Art and History Museum and the Arts and Metier, both larger older buildings with thick stone or brick walls and it certainly was cooler than many other places.

I was in the Louvre yesterday. We are talking real time. Whether you agree with me or not the thick walls have no effect whatsoever on the heat in the non-air conditioned rooms. I was there. I am not basing it on where I live.

Voyageur Facile, maybe that means the heat this summer in Europe is really exceptional.

Normally thicker walls will have a cooling effect regardless of the heat..that's pretty much a give. What one of you( and you know WHO you are) seems to be forgetting is that those same thicker walls will also hold in the heat which is generated by a LOT of folks browsing through an enclosed space such as a museum.
Perhaps some of the places didn't seem as if they were air conditioned because it wasn't frigid inside. but simply comfortable.

Forgive a little amusement on the part of those of us in the States who have lived with hot summers and old buildings for quite a while. Brick, stone, thick masonry walls -- yes, they do keep out the heat for a while because they are slow to conduct. For the same reason, once the heat eases outside, if those walls have in fact heated up, it will take quite a bit longer for them to cool down -- approx. as long as it took them to heat up. E.g., if they were still cool after 3 days of a heat wave, they will still be warm 2-3 days after it dissipates -- more or less -- depending on how cool it gets.

All you have to do is think of stone, brick, or masonry ovens and how they hold the heat for long, slow cooking. I have some not-so-fond memories of living in brick apartment buildings that were exactly like those ovens after 5 days of 95-100F weather and which were still hot in the middle of the night long after the outside temperature dropped a bit. I became a moderate expert in things like cross-ventilation, lining up fans in sequence, and wet towels on my body in front of a fan to help me sleep.

On another aspect of the European heat wave (for which I have great sympathy to all -- it's absolutely miserable):
I note that the Holy Father is calling for rain. From his lips to God's ears, so to speak, but I'm again amused at the assumption that rain will end a heat wave. If traditional weather patterns hold and the rain signals the passage of a front, well and good. But if all you get is rain from instability of the air or a wavering front, then you'll find yourself with both heat and oppressive humidity. The Pope might want to fine-tune his supplications!

Some of us--who have also lived in old brick buildings in the States--don't find the ongoing heat wave here in Europe quite so amusing. Animals (and people) are dying from heat, birds are dying from botulism outbreaks in their water sources, crops are withering away before farmers' eyes, and beautiful parts of the countryside have been destroyed by fire. Yes, that must be screamingly funny to those who live in air conditioned homes, drive in air conditioned cars, work in air conditioned offices and shop in air conditioned malls.
Even if the rain doesn't end the heat, it would certainly help the drought. FYI, the Pope also prayed for an end to the heat wave.
BTilke (Brussels)

Ease up BTilke, I do not consider heat, drought, etc., at all amusing, and I did say I sympathized with Europeans suffering this unprecedented heat.

I have seen and sorrowed over comparable devastation in the MidWest, Prairie, South, and West to animals and people alike, at least twice in the last two decades. It is indeed horrendous, the more so if you suspect that humanity may have as much culpability as the weather gods for such extreme weather. But may I gently gently oh so gently point out that people who didn't live here (including Europeans) paid rather little attention to it, just as people who don't live with hurricanes think that they work their devastation mainly on luxury beach homes, so no big tsk tsk.

What I found therefore somewhat amusing was the relative unfamiliarity with what happens requot;thick walls." In the same vein, it continues to amuse me -- in an ironic, not yuck-yuck, way -- that Southerners in the US refuse to acknowledge that it gets cold down there, so houses are uninsulated and furnaces/heat pumps are notoriously underpowered AND at the same time Northerners refuse to acknowledge that it gets hot up there, so air conditioning is considered irrelevant and buildings are designed with no concept of cross-ventilation. Similarly, Europeans may have at one time thought our droughts, heat waves, etc. were just something to be expected because that's what the US's geography dictates. At core, many of us have come to the erroneous assumption we live in the protection of civilization and that weather catastrophes happen to someone else.

Having lived in both stone and brick homes, stone homes can be fairly comfortable in hot weather. Stone homes don't heat up like ovens in the way you described, especially with the windows open at night.
*IF* the current heat waves/extreme weather turn out to be man made (i.e., global warming) then it's hard to see how Europeans 100 to 500 years ago could have seen these temperatures coming and built accordingly.
Still, I don't find anything about the current heat wave amusing even in the ironic sense. Perhaps if we weren't dealing with another 100+ degrees day, we'd have a finer appreciation of the smirks from the other side of the pond.