Over the past few days, I have been searching travel-booking websites for a hotel suitable for my upcoming trip to Paris, France in the second half of March. Yesterday afternoon, after hours of searching, I finally managed to reserve a hotel room that meets my particular requirements.
I’m happy not so much because I found the right hotel, but rather because I won’t have to spend any more of my precious time conducting searches, and use it instead for things I truly enjoy, such as reading at a café, studying English and French, and exercising.
I’ve traveled to Paris numerous times since my first visit in 2007—in fact, so many times I’ve lost count already. Over the years, I’ve not only explored various neighborhoods in Paris, but also visited several suburban towns. Granted, there are still many areas that I have yet to discover, but I already have a few places that I particularly like, and proximity to those areas is definitely a factor in selecting a hotel for my stay.
As for what I do in Paris, I’m not someone who likes to pack my schedule with too many places to visit or events to attend. Rather, I prefer to have little planning and follow my instinct to visit whichever place that interests me the most at that particular moment.
Normally, I like to shop for books, visit art museums, and spend hours randomly walking around different neighborhoods, taking in the old architecture and occasionally sitting down at a charming café for book-reading and people-watching.
Overall, my numerous stays in Paris have been enjoyable, but as with most travels, my past visits have not been without a few mishaps and unpleasant experiences here and there. Some of the most irritating incidents occurred when I took flights with Air France, the flag carrier of the country.
On a flight back to Singapore in 2012, the air conditioning of the aircraft completely malfunctioned, and the temperature kept rising to the point of being intolerable, leaving passengers sweating and gasping for cool air for hours. No explanation was given by the crew afterward. However, I was naive back then and thought it was a freak incident and didn’t think much of it afterward. Little did I know that I was in for an additional series of utterly unbearable experiences with Air France.
During another trip in 2013, after landing at the airport in Paris, we had to wait in front of the baggage carousel for more than two hours. The area was not heated and was freezingly cold. There was no public announcement about the expected time of luggage delivery, so all we could do was stand around and wait. In the end, I lost my temper and got into an argument with the Air France ground staff, who shouted back at me without providing an explanation or an apology.
Near the end of that same trip, at the boarding gate for the flight back to Singapore, after some passengers had already boarded the plane, the remaining passengers were suddenly asked to stop boarding for some unknown reason and made to stand in line for another hour before the boarding finally resumed.
This time, a staff member made an announcement via the PA system to explain the situation, but none of us understood what she was saying in English because her voice was muffled and heavily accented, and she was talking unnecessarily fast, probably just to show off her English fluency. It was at that moment that I swore to myself never to take an Air France flight again for the rest of my life.
I believe that the inefficiency of Air France is a manifestation of the various issues plaguing France as a whole, to which there are no quick fixes. Setting aside all these issues with the airline company, travelers to Paris constantly experience a constellation of inconveniences, such as accommodation not equipped with an air conditioner or elevator, difficulty in finding clean public toilets, and public transportation being frequently interrupted by labor strikes.
Having said that, since I don’t live there, I don’t have to face these issues on a permanent basis. Instead of dwelling on the negative aspects, I should focus on the overwhelmingly attractive aspects of traveling in the City of Light to make the most of my stay.
Since I understand French quite a bit, language is not a major obstacle for me. However, I wish I could understand French even better, so I can watch a French movie at a local cinema or read a French novel while sitting at a café—in short, pretend to be a Parisian if only for a day and enjoy the same things as the locals.
Even in this era dominated by artificial intelligence and automated translation, ability to understand the local language firsthand can give you immense pleasure that cannot be experienced otherwise. In fact, enjoying my visits to Paris is probably the biggest driving force behind my desire to become fluent in French. As long as I keep visiting Paris for inspiration, I will persist in my studies of the language of Rousseau.
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