Sojourn in Paris #4

Paris 2025 - Quintessential Paris 

Compared to the Paris I knew years ago, I couldn't help but think that even this beautiful city has been 'homogenised' or perhaps 'globalised'. At one time, there seemed a clear difference between Paris and London or any other big city. It didn't appear so marked to me any more. It's hard to pick out 'the Parisiens' from the general mass of humanity thronging the streets (and there are so many more people everywhere!) The plentiful local supermarkets had little to differentiate them from our own local ones. 

Nevertheless, there are some abiding distinctive features. Despite the cold and damp weather, the pavement cafés were busy with friends chatting over coffee and pastries. The architecture is distinctive, as are the lovely art nouveau Métro signs designed in 1900 by Hector Guimard, 86 of which survive and are now protected. In the Métro system itself, it becomes quite clear why those now resurgent 'metro tiles' are so called. There are millions of them on walls and ceilings! 

Aside from the supermarket chains - Carrefour, Monoprix and the rest - there are still delightful specialist shops: butchers, greengrocers, flower shops, cheese sellers and of course many wonderful bakers and pastry shops. Close to our accommodation there were two dedicated gluten free bakeries. That was a joy for me, to be able to have delicate pastries (lemony crème pâtissière, in a pastry case topped with meringue - yum!; and a macaron) and slices of delicious bread. ( My photo isn't of the gf bakery but another patisserie.) 

I stopped to photograph this ice cream shop (below), only then noticing the tiled sign above it, a relic of France's colonial past. It depicts a slave serving his master, who sits on sacks of coffee beans. 'Au Planteur' (a planteur being a plantation owner) was a tea, coffee and chocolate shop. The writing under the picture says 'Aucune Succursale', which means 'No branch' - the owner had no other outlets selling his products. The plaque dates from about 1890 and is now a listed, though controversial, monument. 

My daughter took us into 'Merci', a sizeable 'destination' store that sold clothing, homewares and all manner of interesting and trendy things. It had a red Fiat 500 parked in the entrance courtyard.