Tourist for a day: let’s go visit our new hometown, Paris.

My husband and I recently hosted a group of English friends as in our home.  During that brief visit, I shared their enthusiasm for our unimaginable good fortune of being able to live in Paris.  I got to be a tourist in my own city. 

I had been wondering what exactly I should show them, but they had their own ideas so there was no need to arrange anything; we just followed them.  When you live in Paris, you do not really have the time to visit it, so it was nice to have them as a motivation to actually do so. 

First, the inevitable: the Eiffel Tower.  We queued for hours.  But, like all the other tourists, we finally won the right to see Paris from a higher altitude.  Hungry cameras taking the same photos of the same old Paris for albums back home. Back home in Japan, Russia, Poland, and Italy (based on the languages I could identify).  You can see the sparkle in their eyes: Paris is a dream city and all the French are kind, smiling, beautiful and elegant, as far as these visitors know. 

The, we took the Bateaux Mouches for a trip on the Seine into the heart of Paris.  Again, the same tourists.  The same cameras.  The same old recording recounting the history of the city starts again and again each time a new group of tourists gets on board.  The tour recording is available in 11 languages:  French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Polish, and Dutch.  No need to look any further.  Moreover, each translation is adjusted to the expectations of each nationality according to their cultural references.

I played a game: by only looking at the tourists’ clothes, I would try to identify their nationalities.

Mysterious looking, dark glances, sparkling jewellery hanging from the woman’s neck, men talking on their cell phones.  Italians. 

Parkas, blond hair, a lot of make-up, high hills.  Eastern Europeans. 

Sporty style, city look.  Spanish. 

Cameras around necks.  Japanese. 

This is not serious, you will say, but I’m sure you do the same.  It’s fun, especially, when you are a foreigner, too.  I often try to identify people coming from my country.

This was my afternoon visiting Paris—a stereotypical touristy trip that somehow, under this autumn’s sun, made me happy.  I didn’t take any photos, but I’m sure that my photo will be, accidentally, in photo albums back home in who-knows-where. 

Tomorrow I will go to the office without even looking up at the Eiffel Tower.  For us, it will always be there, so no need to check.