Russ McBee

In February 2005, totally on a whim, I went to Paris by myself for the weekend. I left Knoxville on a Friday afternoon, arrived in Paris Saturday morning, and returned Monday afternoon. The weather was brutally cold, and I was exhausted after I returned, but none of that mattered. I was in Paris, and I was going to see and do the things I wanted.

The trip was a blast. I booked a cheapo hotel room in Montmartre which had perhaps the smallest bed I've slept in since I left the crib. That didn't matter either. I love Paris, and I was there to see the sights. The bed was largely irrelevant.

I don't speak a word of French. Keep that in mind.

On Saturday afternoon, after walking around Montmartre for a good long while, I decided to see the Eiffel Tower. I'd been to Paris before, but I'd never been up the Tower. I found a taxi stand at the western edge of the Montmartre district, on the Rue Caulaincourt, and stood there for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for a cab to show up. It was sprinkling/spitting snow, and the cold North Sea wind was hitting me square in the face. I'm sure that made the time seem longer than it was; I probably waited no more than fifteen minutes or so. Eventually, a cab showed up.

The taxi driver was a large black man who looked to be at least 6'4" and probably weighed 300 pounds. He spoke no English, but his French was flawless.

I hopped in the taxi and said, in my best French, "La Tour Eiffel, s'il vous plait." I got the gender right on the article, but please know that I speak French approximately the same way Peggy Hill speaks Spanish, but with essentially zero fluency.

The driver either didn't notice my horrid French or was too polite to say anything. He nodded, smiled, and said, "Oui, monsieur."

Then he said something else in French which I didn't understand. I said, "Je ne parle pas Francais. Parlez-vous Anglais?" (Or, "I don't speak French. Do you speak English?")

He said, "Oh, non, monsieur." He paused, looked in the rear view mirror and said, "Monsieur? Vous Anglais, Canadien, Americain?"

I said, "Ah. Je suis un Americain." ("I'm an American.")

He said, "Tres bien." He paused again and said, "Monsieur! Vous parlez Francais!"

I shook my head and said, "Non! Je ne parle pas Francais. Je suis un Americain stupide." ("Nope! I don't speak French, cuz I'm just a stupid American.")

He laughed and said, "Pfft. Non, monsieur."

It was like this all the way to the Eiffel Tower.

He said, "Monsieur? En Anglais, 'La Tour Eiffel'?"

I said, "Non. En Anglais, 'The Eiffel Tower'."

He said, "Vous parlez Francais, monsieur!"

I said, "Non! Je ne parle pas Francais. Je suis un Americain stupide."

He laughed again and said, "Pfft. Non, monsieur."

I said, "Je suis un Americain. Vous? Vous Francais, Africain, Caribbean?"

He said, "Je suis (something something) Africain (something something) Niger."

I said, "Ah. En Anglais, 'Niger'." He seemed puzzled that Niger is pronounced in English just like it is in French.

A block or so later, he said, "Monsieur, (something something) jour (something) visitez Paris?" I took this to mean, "How many days are you visiting Paris?"

I said, "Un, deux ... deux jour!" (I didn't know the French for "two and a half days" and it would have been dishonest to round it up to "trois" days, so I rounded it down to two. I also temporarily forgot that the French use the English word "weekend," since there's no native French word for it.)

He said, "Tres bien ... vous parlez Francais, monsieur!" He was convinced I spoke French.

"Non, je ne parle pas Francais," I said again. "Je suis un Americain stupide."

He laughed and said, "Monsieur? Vous visitez Paris beaucoup?"

I said, "Un, deux, trois ... trois visites."

"Tres bien ... Monsieur! Vous parlez Francais!!"

I smiled again and said, "Non, je ne parle pas Francais. Je suis un Americain stupide!" We both started laughing at this point, because he slowly started to realize that I spoke the truth.

A block or so later, he said, "Monsieur? Vous visitez Paris pour la business?" He pronounced "business" exactly like "beezzness."

I said, "Non, non business. Plaisir."

He grinned ear to ear, snickered, winked, and said, "Ooooh ... 'plaisir'!" Apparently, "pleasure" means something in French that I totally didn't expect. I think he believed I was there to hook up with somebody. If he'd been sitting next to me, he would've elbowed me in the ribs.

I said, "Non, non, non ... La Tour Eiffel, La Louvre, Notre Dame, Montmartre ... plaisir!"

He grinned again, nodded, and said, "Oui, monsieur. 'Plaisir'." I thought, "Damn. He thinks I'm here on a booty call. All I want to do is see the Mona Lisa."

When I arrived at the Eiffel Tower, I tipped him well. We bid our "adieus."

I arrived at the tower shortly before dusk. Even though it was nasty cold and spitting some hellish mixture of drizzle, snow, and sleet, there were a fair number of people waiting in line for the elevator up to the observation deck. At that time, the deck at the very top of the tower was closed for renovations, so the only choice was the lower platform, about a third of the way up. I bought my ticket, took the elevator up through the elegant structure of that brilliantly designed tower, and walked out onto the observation platform.

The wind was howling, and I was frozen to the bone, but I absolutely did not care. I saw all of Paris laid out below me, its Napoleonic grandeur even more plainly visible from on high. The city is monumental at street level, and it is still monumental hundreds of feet above. Its streets flow in a chaotic but rhythmic pattern of diagonals criss-crossing a more or less north/south, east/west grid. Sort of.

The whole tapestry of the city was simultaneously visible and still completely incomprehensible. Buildings are mostly kept to a uniform height (another of Napoleon's changes), varying only slightly from one street to another.

Then the sun began to set, and the lights of the city began to twinkle into life. Paris is called "The City Of Lights" for a good reason. Every monument, every building, and seemingly every tree is illuminated in a warm, yellow glow. No harsh white lights pollute the night sky in Paris. Everything is bathed in a warm facsimile of faded sunshine. At night, the city takes on a life and vibrancy and otherworldly hum, partly because of the lights. It is impossible to capture this in a photograph.

So, there I stood, on the observation deck, watching Paris transform from its daytime hustle and chaos into its nighttime garb of beautifully glowing marble and trees.

This was taken just before the lights came on. The hill in the distance is Montmartre, with Sacre Coeur at its peak. My hotel was about three blocks downhill from the church:

I stayed up there a long time, watching the nocturnal personality of the city wake from its daily sleep. Eventually, I realized I was frozen to the bone, so I took the elevator back down.

I caught a taxi back to my hotel; this time, the driver spoke fluent English. He took me back along a different route than the one I'd enjoyed with my Nigerien friend; the return route included the Pont Alma tunnel, where Princess Diana was killed. The support columns in the middle of the tunnel still bear the horrid, diagonal, black scars of her car's impact. The driver told me the Parisian government decided to leave those marks in place as a kind of memorial to her. It was creepy.

My photos of the Eiffel Tower are here, and the rest of my photos from this trip are here.