“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” someone once wrote, and I believe the fellow had in mind some events in France. My wife and I slipped into Paris a couple of weeks ago, and we found that the observation still applied, even without the unpleasantness of the guillotine.
We were celebrating a significant anniversary; it seemed to us a long weekend spent gorging on pate de campagne at sidewalk cafes and washing down fat snails with austere premier cru Chablis at brasseries might be just the thing.
It was the best of times indeed, at least from the selfish tourist perspective. Attractions normally choked with visitors enjoyed rare breathing room. Getting tickets for the Musee d’Orsay was a breeze. Once in the museum, we found that works people regularly jostle and shoulder to view weren’t just unobstructed. Many were in rooms nearly empty of pesky patrons, making it easy to take one’s time enjoying the greatest hits of impressionism. It was possible, for example, to sit in front of Renoir’s pair of paintings, City Dance / Country Dance, for minutes at a time without anyone stepping in front of us to make a show of inspecting brush strokes. Van Gogh’s La nuit etoilee was all by itself; without any interlopers to distract from the painting’s effect, it thrummed and sparked with raw electricity. I spent some quality time alone with a favorite painting, Manet’s Fife Player.
The next day, we even managed to make the death march through the world’s grandest bordello (that is, walk through the palace of Versailles) without getting smushed.
So, what about the worst of times bit? We snatched our few days of R and R in a short-lived truce in the COVID wars. We were there not long after Paris was declared an open city and just a little while before French President Emmanuel Macron declared that bars, restaurants, and most public spaces would be off-limits to anyone unable to prove they’ve been vaccinated.
My wife and I had brought our vaccination cards and found that no one was interested in looking at them. The documents we had needed to jet off to Paris were papers showing negative results on COVID-19 tests taken within days of our departure. Getting the tests before take-off was relatively easy: the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., has a pop-up clinic providing same-day results.
But getting out of France wasn’t quite so easy. Once in the country, no one was going to allow us on a plane without the results of a French-administered COVID-19 test. And just try to find somewhere to get such a test. To be ready for a Monday morning flight home, we started stopping at drug stores Saturday morning. We had been told we could get our tests at any of the pharmacies found on every other Parisian street corner. At one after another, we were sent away with nothing but a Gallic shrug. So relentless were the difficulties finding the letters of transit we needed that we all but expected to hear Dooley Wilson break into song.
Come Saturday evening, we had begun to despair of finding somewhere to take COVID-19 tests in time for our departure. Tests, we discovered, were offered at the airport, but by Sunday, all of Monday’s appointments were spoken for. My wife, undaunted and unstoppable, began to work the phones in earnest. Within an hour, she had found a laboratory in a distant arrondissement that offered — ce n’est pas possible! — COVID-19 testing, and on Sunday, no less. The next morning, we were at a ramshackle clinic. We got ourselves on a list and were sent around the corner and down the block to a nondescript door. We knocked, went in, were swabbed by a sullen young woman and told to come back in half an hour. The process had the shabby, furtive feel of a narcotics transaction. But we did manage to get the papers we needed.
Should you venture to France anytime soon, be prepared for shifting rules and regulations. But it’s worth the uncertainty. If you need an excuse for weathering COVID-created travel hassles, let me give you the only reason you will need. Go to the restaurant Josephine chez Dumonet. Order the boeuf bourguignon. You won’t be worrying about how to get the papers you’ll need to leave France; all you’ll be thinking is of are ways to stay in Paris so that you can come back to Chez Dumonet for more boeuf bourguignon.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
