Spend a week in Paris, even an unusually chilly April week, and you get used to the sight of people making out on the streets.
The public passion of Paris keeps the city alive and makes it an irresistible magnet for travelers. Beyond the passion of the French-kiss kind, there is the French capital's apparent enthusiasm for living large, looking great, eating well, enjoying art, discussing new ideas and cherishing gorgeous old buildings.
All these qualities were in ample evidence on an eight-day stay in the Marais district.
My friend John and I landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport two weeks after the United States first bombed Baghdad. Customs was a snap, and we were on our way.
Some tourists from the United States were staying away. The Paris tourism office reported a 20 percent to 37 percent decline in all tourism. Italian and German tour groups were in evidence at Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower, but we ran into few large groups of Americans.
A California couple perusing plants one sunny afternoon at a sidewalk market along the Seine paused to say they were glad they hadn't canceled their five-day stay in Paris. "Let's not let our leaders define who we are," said Edward Crump of Sonoma County.
The previous day, a voluble cabdriver had reminded them that just as all Americans don't support President Bush and the war, the French aren't in a perfect line behind President Jacques Chirac.
"He called Chirac stupid and said this war was needed," said India Williams, Crump's companion.
Coverage of "Le Conflit Irakien" in the French media was more critical than in the United States. National dailies Le Monde and Le Figaro each gave extensive play to civilian casualties and ran front-page guest editorials against Bush's foreign policy. On the popular prime-time satirical news show "Les guignols de l'info," a Bush marionette was always shown poring over a Bible before issuing orders to his high command.
During our visit, the war was mostly in the background. Big antiwar demonstrations had subsided. A "Paris against the war" artists' billboard outside City Hall ("Paris contre la guerre") and some anti-Bush graffiti were about the only public signs of anti-Americanism.
We stayed in the Marais district, near the Place des Vosges, a big square park surrounded by a black iron fence and elegant red-brick townhouses dating to 1612. A half-block off the park, the Hotel Place des Vosges offered 16 small rooms with comfy platform beds and marble-walled showers.
From this quiet base, it was an easy walk to the Musee National Picasso, the most memorable of all museums we visited.
The light-washed spaces of the restored but rough-hewn 1656 mansion are chopped and warrenlike, so you can duck into a low room and feel like you alone have just discovered the fabulous 5-foot-tall bust of a woman with a nose like a landslide, a bulbous bronze forehead and entirely elegant neck. Around every corner was evidence of Picasso's unstoppable furor to make — each piece a profound translation from the world to the artwork, which includes paintings, ceramics, collage, murals and an outstanding collection of sculpture.
Admission is free at the rambling Musee Carnavelet, or City of Paris Museum, nearby. Fancy-pants furniture, paintings, tapestries, store signs, tin models of the city, even Proust's cork-walled bedroom share space in this delightfully crowded collection, with windows overlooking courtyards landscaped in the French style, as if with nail scissors.
A few days later, we went to the Pompidou Center, Renzo Piano's behemoth art center that resembles the senior project of a crazed heating-and-air-conditioning engineer. It seemed vast, tiring and overwhelming compared with these other two museums. You get modern art by the football field, with a fourth floor devoted to art since 1960 and a fifth given to the rest of the 20th century.
Humorist David Sedaris, an American in Paris, loves French hospitals because "they set you up with a morphine drip and an ashtray." The French mania for smoking is a major annoyance to a former smoker like myself, but it's a fact of life in Paris.
Not that all Parisians are black-lunged and nonsporty. The Paris Marathon was run on Sunday, and on Friday night I happened upon "Les Rollers," thousands of in-line roller skaters speeding west on rue de Rivoli at 11 p.m.
Still, the average Parisian appears to favor a life of the mind. Bookstores are everywhere; reading is big, discussion is huge.
One contact sport with many adherents is shopping. With lots of stores closed on Sundays, Parisians were out in force on Saturday afternoon at Galeries Lafayette, the Louvre-scaled department store that sells everything from Dior couture to toothpaste.
One feature that I hope won't find its way to the States: headset-wearing employees who stroll among the shoes and belts extolling, via the store's intercom, their suavity and value.
More appealing was La Samaritaine, the faded-glory Right Bank department store with its iron-railing balconies, its confusing floor plan and its peerless rooftop deck above the Seine, with 360-degree city views.
French fondness for paperwork was clear when I sought to exchange some underwear for a different size. There were slips to fill out, four store officials to consult, one form in triplicate, files to staple together, new receipts to be issued.
Less centralized shopping occurs on every block of every street, as people queue for a carryout quiche, pick up lottery tickets and cigs, or haggle with a butcher over a whole chicken or rabbit, with heads still on. The craze du jour in Paris is sneakers. It seemed that each block had one or two stores offering Pumas, Adidas, Tigers, Diesels and Nikes.
Smaller throngs also take advantage of Saturday crowds to protest this or that. A bedsheet emblazoned with slogans helped some anti-McDonald's activists bar entry at a cheeseburger outlet on rue de Rivoli. On the next block, a tall man dressed as a bloody kangaroo was opposing the use of the marsupials for shoe leather.
Existential angst notwithstanding, group activities engage the energy of many Parisians. In golden light on Saturday evening, the Seine bridges near tony Ile St. Louis vibrated with life. A black-robed priest surrounded by elegantly tailored couples and children walked from a church to the nearby Pont Marie for a wedding reception. The women wore hats designed to grab attention, the bride's gown could have been by Givenchy and the champagne flowed freely into crystal flutes.
Just one bridge downriver a motley band — two tubas, trombone, drums, accordion and violin — played for a boisterous neighborhood celebration as passers-by broke into dance and sipped vin ordinaire. Much later, at La Chant des Voyelles, a noisy bistro in the Marais, parties of six and eight dined on pate, salad, roast chicken, veal in wine sauce, profiteroles and espresso amid a clutter of wine bottles, ashtrays and conversation.
When we left the place at 1:45 a.m., it was still crowded and the lively voices carried into the street. It's more likely they were talking of love than of war.