Paris, not the way I remember it

This was my third trip Paris. I have been there as a back-packer. I have been there on someone else's very generous tab. And now I have been there as a traveling parent. Let me add that three times is enough and I have no intentions of going there again.

Every time I mention that to people since we returned to Israel, they all say the same thing: "Oh, you obviously didn't do Paris properly. You definitely have to go back again." What didn't I do properly? We walked the Champs Elysees to the Arc d'Triomphe. We admired the stained glass windows in Notre Dame Cathedral. We watched street performers from the steps of the Basillica. We strolled along the Seine. Some of us (not me) went to the top of the Eiffel Tower. We ate fresh bagettes and croissants. So tell me, what precisely did I not do properly?

You know what I think? I think that all the Paris admirers should continue going to Paris and I think that I should choose other vacation locations.

Now before I explain why I didn't like Paris, let me first acknowledge that the city is home to the best collection of museums and architecture of any city I have ever visited. It is also home to some of the most tastefully dressed regular people I have ever seen on the streets and in the subways. And it is definitely home to the best fresh-baked bagettes and croissants I have ever tasted. And for me, it pretty much ends there.

Paris feels dirty -- omnipresently so -- and pandemonium-like. The entire time I was there I felt like I was caught up in an uncontrollable wave of people and activity and that all I could do was just hold on and go for the ride. This may be fun for some people, but I am not built for that sort of whimsy.

Everywhere I looked there were groups of police officers either heading towards a crime scene or leaving a crime scene. I kept looking around for creeps and criminals. I don't mean the big types of criminals, I mean the little petty thieves who exist invisibly among us. I was watching my bag, but I also had to keep my eyes on the streets and on my kids.

And at the risk of sounding like a narrow-minded fool, I rarely saw any white people. Whatever happened to all those native Parisians of European descent? Where did they go? You know the ones ... the descendants of the proletariat we first met in Les Miserables!!! What happened to Collette's people? I am not so small-minded that I expect large cities to be homogeneous, but the streets of London (and on a smaller scale, the streets of Toronto) still suggest that there might have once been a caucasian majority in the city. I doubt that Napoleon would even recognize the city today.

I also wasn't keen about the fact that, at least in one of the Jewish quarters, the price of the food if you chose to eat inside the restaurant was double what it cost if you settled for sitting on a street curb or window ledge and eating your food there.

Talk about personal conflict: my cheap gene challenging my orderly gene. The conflict verged on unbearable. Most of the time my cheap gene won out -- and for those of you who know me well that won't surprise you. However, now and then my need for order outweighed it and I am still reeling from the trauma of the resulting restaurant tabs!

Nope, sorry, Paris is not the way I remember it and as a result, I am handing over the Paris baton to the people who still view it as a wonderful place to go. I, on the other hand, will be elsewhere eating inside a restaurant at a price I can live with and finding other museums that wil just have to be good enough.