thanks, winesipper, for a great report!

Hello i just came from a europe tour consisting of 6 countries and i can say i fell in love with paris! unfortunately we werent able to try my cousins recommendation:
Jules Verne at the Eiffel tower where she claims have the best oysters..

-dots

Hey Tom and all Paris lovers.... how much do you think knowing the language enhances your love of the city?

I love Paris but as someone who can read a menu and simple signs and little else I am a bit uneasy in some situations. One day I was walking through a park and someone started yelling at me from the other side of a field. If I'd spoken French I'd have known immediately that it was a security guard telling me the park had just closed. I kept walking as I didn't even know the woman was directing her comments to me.

Thanks tom, all great suggestions and comments. I return in February and will mostly be a flaneur and visit friends.

Amwosu, without doubt your ability to converse in French will improve the quality of your experience, as it has for us, even if you can only manage the very basics like me. Fortunately MDW is pretty fluent even though she is not French. As we look back on this trip, use of the language has helped us the most when we are very confused with a transporation issue or in a dinner conversation with your table neighbor should you choose. And yes, it would help if a security guard is barking an instruction to get off the grass etc.

So many people speak some English in Paris that communication should not be a problem in most situations however. Restaurants have English menus, museums have the same for written or audio guides and so forth.

As to another post, Paris is a huge city and bad things happen to well intentioned people.....it just has not been our experience and maybe the language situation has helped.

Tom

People in the touristy areas of Paris usually speak some English; people outside those areas often do not. If you stick to the beaten path, you can get by in English quite easily. If you go astray, it's a bit more difficult, although you'll find a lot more English speakers in Paris than you would French speakers in Los Angeles.

If you venture into the provinces, people who speak English with any useful level of fluency become quite rare.

Tom, I agree with some other posters about the music issue: Ipods at full blast on the métro and loud aggressive French rap in "93" license plate cars are not unusual in "normal" Paris arrondissements (no offense for the lovely Faubourg Saint Germain, but most of us poor souls can't afford to live there! ). Glad you had a great time. Come back soon to visit the remaining three arrondissements!

ttt

Saving for my trip, two weeks from today!!

Thanks for the memories...and future tips for our anniversary trip!

Actually, when I think of music on the metro, I think of the metro musicians and can't help but smile at the memory. I trully enjoyed them. Don't recall booming Ipods or boomboxes or whatever they're called. Maybe I was just lucky.

One of my favorite things about Paris are the dogs in restaurants and bars. I recall a German shepherd in a bistro in the Left Bank that came to work with its person, and how grateful I was to be able to pet it. I tell my dogs about this all the time--how I wish we could bring them to restaurants here in Seattle!

Saving for later.

"People often enter the metro with blaring boom-boxes."

Hi Walkinaround and Christina,

You must be riding Metro lines I don't use. In my experience that's extremely rare - something on the order of one Metro ride per hundred.

Help this generation X'er out with something... who still carries boom boxes? I-PODS definitely... boom boxes I thought those were put on the music hall of fame shelf along with the 8 track.

I did have a teen wearing headphones sit next to me singing very loud on the metro once. I looked at his friend and stated "he will never make it past his first audition." His friend laughed and explained to the singer what I said and the singing immediately stopped.

bookmarking

Christina....in total agreement. As one who loves Paris and goes there on a regular basis for years, I find it amusing to see one unrealistically describing the city as one without warts.

Might I say that I think the Dome is way out of line with their prices.They own the adjacent Bistro du Dome which is well priced and not a tourist trap. Many times I have seen their waiters and kitchen staff carry seafood from the Dome directly to the kitchen of the Bistro. I highly recommend the Bistro.

saving for future reference

I live in NW France in a very rural area and it suits me fine. Last month I had to go to Paris twice, once to apply for a visa and once to get it. Both times I got out ASAP. It's about an hour's drive from me but I don't like the city.


And food? For dinner I had two large almost boneless pork chops, peas, carrots, new potatoes. The pork is local and you could almost cut them with a fork. The lot cost about E1.50. Why should I pay a fortune in a restaurant for a large meal that at home costs me a fraction of what would be expected as a tip? And I can watch a good film on DVD while eating it.

I agree with Winesipper's comments. My husband and I rented an apartment for a month this past April. Actually, we rented two: one in Montmartre and a Parisperfect one in the 7th Arr.
We enjoyed taking the buses rather than the metro, using the Carte Orange, and also enjoyed the Batobus. And we, too, would recommend the Canal St. Martin trip very much.
As for no loud playing of boomboxes or car radios, we also enjoyed the quiet atmosphere inside restaurants, where we did not have to yell at each other to compete with "music" played in the restaurant. We loved how soft spoken the French are.

Kaneda....living in the burbs and the issue of eating at HOME vs restaurants is an issue that is really not faced by the posters here. Most all are tourists and are not concerned with your pork chop bargains. They'll save that till they get home.

Wine-I've written long posts recently on the 10th and the area around Canal St. Martin-my new favorite place (along with everyone else's thinking in Paris-it is the hip boho quarter now)