Foreign Parts

À DÉTESTER: Les Arnaqueurs

Nobody likes un arnaqueur — a cheater, a swindler, a con artist — except, of course, on film.  In "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" Paul Newman and Robert Redford made the notorious bank robbers charmants, and Jean-Paul Belmondo did the same for car thief Michel Poiccard in "Breathless" (À Bout de Souffle"), although lovely Jean Seberg does rat him out in the end.

In real life, however, les arnaqueurs are not so easy to love. I'm thinking of Bernard Madoff, Kenneth Lay, Internet scammers and especially the pickpockets of Paris, who spend their days trawling the city's monuments, looking for unsuspecting tourists to rob.  La Tour Eiffel, Notre-Dame Cathedral, l'Arc de Triomphe, the Châtelet-Les Halles métro station, le Pont des Arts ("Excuse me!  You dropped your ring!"), Charles de Gaulle airport, and la navette (shuttle) between Charles de Gaulle to the RER B station are all prime hunting grounds for those who make their livings by stealing.

To the casual observer, les voleurs (thieves) appear to work in pairs but often they are working in gangs — six or more at a time, filtering through the tourists hordes, looking for people who are too busy looking at something else — a map, a view finder, a monument — to notice that, oops!, the wallet or passport has suddenly disappeared.  

Despite their dastardly deeds, I find les arnaqueurs of Paris fascinating.  They're smart, multilingual, and dedicated.  I enjoy watching them work, especially in front of Notre-Dame. The trouble is, they don't much like being observed.

À AIMER: Mornings at a French Café

What's so special about mornings at a French café?  Well, look at the photo.  See the guy sitting by himself reading?  What is he reading?  A novel.  Not a newspaper.  Not a magazine.  Not a computer screen.  Look around the cafe (which, by the way, is Chez Prune just off the Canal Saint-Martin).  Do you see any laptops?  Any milkshake-sized 'coffee drinks'?  Any trans-fat pastries from a nearby factory?  Non.

Just a strong espresso, a little glass of water, a novel, and the knowledge that you can sit and read until lunchtime if you so desire.  That's what's so special about mornings at a French café.  

On the Road: Why Hawaii is like France

Surfer, Biarritz, France.

Travel enthusiasts are often asked which place on Earth they like best.  For years, my answer was always the same: "Hawaii and France."  No one understood my response — not even me. How could I hold in such high esteem two destinations that are so completely different?  

One place is tropical, while the other place has a climate that ranges from Mediterranean to Humid Oceanic.  One is a mid-sized, crowded nation and gateway to a continent, while the other is a sparsely-populated archipelago and the fiftieth state of a country 2,400 miles away. The citizens of the two places look nothing like one another, and they speak different languages.  Their histories are different, their food is different, their cultures are different — even their immigrants are different.  Both places, though, attract surfers (see photos).  But that is not why they are alike, or why I like them so much.  

No, the reason the two destinations are similar, and so enchanting, hit me during my recent trip to Hawaii.  I hadn't been to the islands in three years, but when I arrived at Honolulu International Airport, I was struck by the sheer number of holidaymakers streaming towards baggage claim. Tourism is down across the globe, but there I was, surrounded by American honeymooners, Japanese families, Brazilian surfers, and German students — just as I had been surrounded by Australian honeymooners, Saudi families, Canadian backpackers, and Italian students when I departed from Charles de Gaulle.  

Hawaii and France are two places that are besieged by tourists, even in off season, and even during times of economic bust.  So far this year, the Hawaiian islands have received nearly four million vacationers — about four times their total population.  In France, the local-tourist ratio is even more pronounced. Paris alone has had 15.9 million visitors this year; this for a city of just two million people.

But mass tourism is not the thing I like about these two places; it's the local reaction to mass tourism that I admire.  Not the reaction of the politicians and developers and tour operators, who court as many visitors as they can, no matter the cost to the local ecology or quality of life.  I'm talking about the way ordinary Hawaiian and French citizens react to the tourist hordes: they ignore them, and I like that.  

In Hawaii and in France, the locals are proud; their friendship is not for sale.  Visitors who want to be catered to, who want "sincere" attention in exchange for money spent, are generally disappointed by both destinations.  And tourists who make no effort, who won't learn ten words of French or who refuse to use chopsticks "in America" (yes, I've heard it), often leave with nothing good to say about the incredible places they have just had the fortune to visit.

Of course, French citizens and Hawaiian kama'aina (long-time residents, as there are few true Hawaiians left) sometimes say disparaging things about their guests (Parisians can make the word touriste sound like a put-down, just by the way they say it).  I don't condone tourist-bashing (hey, I'm a tourist too), but I do understand the frustrations of those who have to deal directly with the ugliest of the ugly vacationers.  I understand their annoyance every time I see an American college student at Charles de Gaulle Airport wearing pajamas, and I certainly understood the anger of a French waiter the night a German tourist accused him of marking up the price of a bottle of wine, a price that was clearly listed on the menu and on the chalkboard.  In Hawaii, I have seen such disrespect for local culture and wildlife that it has turned my stomach.  There are too many instances to recount, but one of the worst was an English snorkeler who yanked on the flipper of an endangered green sea turtle, just a few feet from a large sign that said it was prohibited to approach, touch, or harass the reptiles.

Such bad tourist behavior deserves disdain and it is, unfortunately, so pervasive in Hawaii and in France that it means good travelers have to work that much harder to gain the respect of the locals.  But this is what I like about French and Hawaiian citizens: they are no pushovers.  When they are nice to you, they mean it.  And that means you have merited their respect.

Surfer, North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii.

On the Road: Hawaii head

Where did my mind go?  

Six days in Hawaii and I have lost the ability to think beyond the immediate future.  I blame it on what I call "Hawaii head," a wonderful state of bliss in which one can focus only on what one is going to do in the next sixty minutes.  The choices are delightfully simple: Surf or snorkel?  Kayak or swim?  Sushi or udon?  Take a nap or drink some iced coffee?  Rinse the saltwater off your hair or dive back in?

Les vacances!  There is no better way to re-boot.  

Aloha from the North Shore of Oahu.  

À AIMER: la rentrée

Il fait chaud in Paris right now, but it's no longer summer.  

L'été ended (unofficially) last week with la rentrée, the start of the fall term in France and the end of the summer vacances.  Les Parisiens came back to their city, as they always do, in two great waves: the first group flooded in the weekend of l'Assomption (August 15, the day that Mary, Jesus's mother, is said to have ascended into heaven.  In France, Assumption Day is a public holiday — curious for a country that prides itself on its secularism).  The second group returned last week, just in time to stock le frigo and to buy school supplies for la rentrée scolaire, back-to-school for French kids, which began last Thursday.  

For those of us who like to stay in town in August, la rentrée can come as quite as shock.  During the last weekend of the month, you can still walk down the middle of Rue de Rivoli at midnight, marveling that le Marais looks like an abandoned movie set, but by the first week of September you will be flattened by platoons of Renaults, Citroëns, and unlicensed scooters if you try to put even a toe off the sidewalk. 

The quiet days of August are gone, but there is plenty to love about la rentrée: the return of your favorite butcher, the sudden delivery of long-awaited mail, two bank tellers instead of just one.  There is a palpable buzz in the air as friends catch up at the corner brasserie, neighbors exchange pleasantries, and newscasters egg everyone on by breathlessly reporting la rentrée as a major event. 

On Wednesday morning before the first day of class, the department store BHV is pure chaos.  I'm riding the escalator up past aisles of back-to-school clothes, backpacks, lined notebooks, ballpoint pens, and erasers.  The woman in front of me gestures to the school supplies and exclaims to her young daughter, "Just look at all of these pretty things!"  Her daughter looks unimpressed — her mind is probably on the alarm clock that will wake her tomorrow before dawn — but her maman's enthusiasm works on me.  I ride back downstairs and buy myself a new Moleskine notebook, just in time for my favorite aspect of la rentrée — my vacances.

With everybody else back to school or back to the office, airfares have come down.  And that's my cue to leave.  So welcome back, Parisians, and au revoir.  

Aloha, Hawaii!  

À DÉTESTER: les macarons

Cloying.  

That's the word that comes to my mind when I see a tray of macarons.  Cloying.  Not delicious or elegant or French. Why do so many Americans and Japanese think "le macaron" is the Parisian dessert?  I'm not sure about the Japanese, but I know where Americans — especially American women — get that idea: from "Sex and the City."  From the pages of American Vogue and Gourmet and just about every other magazine I thumb through whenever I'm back in the U.S.  If the editors have decided to do a piece on Paris, or on French desserts, we are bound to read about the virtues of les macarons.

We are also bound to read about Ladurée.  Now I confess, about once a year, when my sister or mother is in town or when it's particularly cold and drizzly, I get a craving to go to the original Ladurée, that jewel box of a pâtisserie on the corner of Rue Royale and Rue Saint-Honoré.  Once we get through the doorway, which is inevitably blocked by a mob of tourists and aging Parisians, we will be served either by a charming waiter in a heavily used suit or by a grumpy middle-aged waitress who, via her perma-grimace and rough movements (she drops, rather than sets, everything on the table) lets us know that she would rather be home with her family than serving us.

As we wait for our turn to order, we will check out the room. If we're sitting downstairs, there is a lot to look at: gilded moldings, marble tables, cherubs cavorting on painted ceilings.  Upstairs, it's more informal and clubby: your grandparent's den, maybe.  If your grandparents happen to live in a rambling old apartment in Manhattan or London.  It doesn't look particularly Parisian here, and it doesn't feel very Parisian, either.  Save for the pair of women in mink, who are gossiping wildly in French, oblivious to everyone else, the customers sitting upstairs at Ladurée were not born on French soil.  Across from us is a preppy Japanese family looking slightly confused — or is it displeased? — by the food and the service.  To our right is a jolly American couple who seems to have ordered one of everything.  To our left is a haughty young English woman with her frayed-looking but clearly wealthy fiancé.  They are shopping for engagement rings.  As she thumbs through a Cartier catalog, she expresses her displeasure at being seated next to a common American (that common American, by the way, is me.  This really did happen.)

Mais bon.  It is our time to order.  If we get one of the waitresses and if we order in French, they will begrudgingly answer us in the language of Molière — begrudgingly.  If we get the waiter, he will treat us with respect and good humor, even if we can't speak French and even if we are those terribly rude types who bark orders, demanding, "I want!" and "Give me!"  If we are like that, he will nod and say "thank you" and he will bring us what we desire.  He'll be polite about it, on the surface.  But listen to what he says under his breath.  If we hear him utter the word "cons," pronounced "cone," we will know: he has just called us assholes.  But he will do it with such style.

So what does someone who doesn't like macarons order at Ladurée?  Chocolat chaud — a thick brew of bittersweet hot chocolate that is like drinking liquid cake.  Or maybe a lemon tart.  No macarons, please.  Not the raspberry or cassis or white chocolate or orange.  They all hurt my teeth.  I detest them all, except — except for one, and they don't make it at Ladurée.  

Truffe.  I would like the truffle macaron, s'il vous plaît.  I had this "cookie" just once, at an elegant lunch event at the Hôtel Meurice.  The sucré-salé (sugary-salty) appetizer was flecked with shavings of the world's most delicious and expensive mushroom, and it was absolutely divine, especially when accompanied by a glass of dry champagne.

À AIMER: July 13 in France — the firemen's ball

Most Francophiles know about July 14, Bastille Day.  But they don't always know about July 13, the night of le bal des sapeurs-pompiers (the firemen's ball).  This Monday, all around France, firefighters will host their annual fundraising fête for anybody who wants to join l'équipe in drinking, dancing and perhaps nibbling a merguez sausage or two until the wee hours.

The boots (see above) come off for this often-raucous event that, depending on the firehouse, might feature handsome pompiers performing rehearsed — or impromptu — stripteases. The first year I attended, I went to the firehouse in the Marais, where it seemed all of the single women and men in le quartier had gathered in order to find a fireman to call their very own.  Alas, given the ratio of pompiers to citoyens, most attendees went home disappointed.

À AIMER: picnics along the Seine

This week, France's new restaurant tax went into effect, lowering the TVA (taxe sur la valeur ajoutée, or value-added tax) that restaurant owners pay the French government from 19.6 percent to 5.5 percent.  In theory, this should translate into cheaper bills for diners.  In theory.  So far, though, the French press has reported that very few cafés and restaurants have lowered their prices.  Some restaurateurs have said that they are using the tax savings to hire more help, while others have explained that they are busy reprinting new menus and, well, what with vacations looming, this could take a while. Ahem.  

For summer visitors who would like to save on meals right now, I suggest heading to the banks of the Seine, the Canal Saint-Martin or the Canal de l'Ourcq, where Parisians go when il fait beau.  Hit the morning markets or one of the city's great foodie streets (for example, rue Cler in the seventh arrondissement, rue Montorgueil in the second, or rue de Lévis in the seventeenth) during the day, pick up a bottle of chilled rosé en route, and don't forget to pack a couple of glasses and un tir-bouchon (corkscrew).

Voilà — une pique-nique à la française, not at all cher (expensive), and the view cannot be beat.  Enjoy.

À DÉTESTER: the hell walk

Welcome to the Hell Walk, also known as le trottoir roulant rapide (the rapid moving sidewalk) at la Gare Montparnasse. It was installed in 2002 and has mostly been en panne (out of order) since —which is actually a good thing.  Why?  Because the super minds who designed it thought that it would be practical if the 180-meter-long trottoir rolled very quickly, at the pace of three meters (9.84 feet) per second, in order to save busy commuters time.  

I rode it once, on the one occasion in seven years that I've witnessed it working, and nearly fell backward onto mes fesses (look that one up).  According to the French press, I wasn't the only person to lose my footing on the thing, which was designed so that passengers first stepped onto a slow-moving belt and then were jetted onto the fast-moving trottoir. Grannies, children, even able-bodied young men fell victim to the infernal contraption, which ran (and looks) like something out of a Stephen King novel.  

Soon, though, the Hell Walk will be replaced by a slower-moving trattoir roulant — if, that is, you consider 2011 soon. In the meantime, you can enjoy the non-moving rapid moving sidewalk at your own pace.

À AIMER: nocturnal wanderings

Brassaï had it right — there is no better time of day to photograph Paris than night.  After dark, the city comes alive and all you have to do to experience it is get out there and walk.  Wear a comfortable pair of (chic) shoes, tuck your camera in a bag, and bring just enough money for coffee or a glass of wine at one of the outdoor terrasses.  As summer deepens, the nights seem to last forever.