France took the bombing of the World Trade Center hard: they removed (or sealed) the trash cans and all the public toilets on the street (lest a terrorist hide a bomb in them). They invented a new word: vigipirate, which seems to mean vigilance against terrorism - a gratuitous insult to pirates. Almost every public place, including movie theatres, makes a pretense of searching the entrants' effects. Some (the Louvre, for example) scan entrants' persons with metal detectors and x-ray their effects. I see lots of cops hanging out on the streets, usually gossiping with each other in groups, wearing bullet-proof vests; some carry automatic weapons at the ready.
The closing of the public toilets matters. As a public service I announce the debut of Pissing In Paris, a collection of places to use the bathroom (both numbers) in Paris, preferably free. Please contribute.
Paris created itself from smaller towns that grew together. Many keep their identity as neighborhoods (for example: Montmartre, Montparnasse, Bercy, Villejuif). The city divides itself into 20 Arrondisements, which don't necessarily respect traditional neighborhood boundaries. Each arrondisement has its own government, the Mairie, often in handsome buildings worth a look. Numbering of the arrondisements starts in the center and grows clockwise helically outward.
Because Paris grew together from smaller towns it has no uniform street naming or numbering system. It has no grid: streets go in any direction. None of the streets have numbers or alphabetically-sorted names. Streets start numbering from where they start, in whatever direction they choose. Streets may change name from one block to the next.
Paris commemorates famous people by naming streets after them. An old city, it ran out of streets in the 16th century, so has resorted to breaking up streets and giving subsequent famous people a few blocks each, keeping tourists on their toes.
You can find this page at: http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~rbell/France/Paris.html.gz
© 2001, Russell Bell