Hello you!
Closed? All summer? No Way!
Welcome to Paris in August.
One after another they fell like dominos. Signs appeared in the windows of my favourite cafes, pharmacies, bakeries and bookshops. Some were neatly typed out, some were very simply hand written and read ‘Ferme pour Aout. Bon Vacances (closed for August, happy holidays). I noticed how the city began to quieten too. The group of guys who’d hang around on the corner, gawking at girls and resembling the French inbetweeners, disappeared. The path to the park was less crowded. You could feel rest in the air. Space. The energy of the city changed completely. Paris became sleepy, dormant, even the traffic seemed to dissipate.
It was as if the grown ups had come in to take control of all the fun we were having in our land of Peter Pans and Wendys as so many cities are. That’s enough now, time for a nap, time for some rest. I doubt France is the only country to take extended times of collective rest but this was the first time I’d experienced it.
There were of course exceptions, but my favourite cafe around the corner from my apartment wasn’t spared. Neither was Gabriel’s restaurant from Emily in Paris which I walk past every night on Hope’s last chance for the toilet before bed. I thought of other cities like New York and couldn’t imagine businesses willingly closing down and opting out of potential profits. Paris is full of tourists in August too, but nobody seems to care. Rest comes first. It’s as if the French are saying, we work hard enough, we need a break and we’re going to take it!
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