French tourists in Paris

Posts here and in other forums (I get restaurant advice from Chowhound) seem to tend to assume the people you see in Paris are either tourists from other countries or Parisians. I%26#39;m thinking about the assumption that a restaurant filled with people speaking French is a restaurant full of locals, not tourists or about posts about what is appropriate to wear, with a discussion of how French women dress.

So I%26#39;m wondering, basically out of idle curiousity, about French tourists in Paris. Do French people visit Paris on vacation the way Americans visit NYC or San Francisco? Do the Parisians look at them as tourists and out-of-towners in roughly the same way they look at foreign tourists? Is a Parisian who is likely to treat a foreign tourist with contempt likely to treat a French tourist similarly? Do people dress with similarly in Paris and outside of it?

Or are dress and accents so similar that a Parisian can%26#39;t immediately distinguish between a Parisian and a French person who isn%26#39;t from Paris?

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Anywhere within the Periferique you are more likely to see someone not from Paris than a Parisian. Most tourists tend to stay inside the peri except for trips to versailles, and getting to the airport. Of the 11 million people who live in greater Paris, only 2 million live in Paris itself - inside the peri. 45 million tourists a year visit Paris, and 60% of them are from overseas (don%26#39;t ask me why I know these figures off the top of my head; I just do...)

A Parisian can immediately spot a non Parisian - from 45 paces if necessary. They will regard them with a mixture of amused condescension and comptempt - much the way, I imagine, that New Yorkers regard anyone from the US but not NY...

Anyone who assumes that the other people they are seeing in Paris, I%26#39;m afraid, are just fooling themselves :¬) You have to travel outside the single digit arrs to have any sort of chance of running into a Parisian who isn%26#39;t either at work or on their way to work

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First of all there are relatively few %26quot;true Parisians%26quot; compared to the number of people who live in Paris and were born in the provinces.

Yes, there are French tourists in Paris. I don%26#39;t think there is a difference in the way they dress. Some have accents, some haven%26#39;t ....you usually can%26#39;t tell where they come from until they open their mouth and even so, it doesn%26#39;t prove anything.

There has always been a rivalry between Paris and the provinces. Some Parisians may look down with contempt on %26quot;provinciaux%26quot; (the reverse is true when they venture out in the provinces !).

Remember : in the provinces people do not have an accent, in Paris they do.......... :-))

To me, the %26quot;how to dress to look like a local%26quot; questions seem to be an American feature. An European will enquire about the weather and whether a coat is needed or a sweater will do, but he/she%26#39;ll very rarely go into more details.

Hope this answers some of your questions !

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Wizard is right - many of the tourists in Paris are French. In 2007, of the 15.4 million hotel arrivals, about 6.6 million (43.1%) were French (according to the Paris tourist office).

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Interesting.

When you say 60% of tourists are from overseas, you mean outside of France or literally they had to cross an ocean?

We%26#39;ll be in the Marais in December. It sounds like as awful lot of the French speaking people in the restaurants and shops will be French tourists. Hmmm. Who knew? (Well, you obviously.)

I%26#39;m not surprised that a Parisian can spot a non-Parisian easily. I had assumed that there are obvious differences in dress and accent, but wasn%26#39;t sure.

So you think when a New Yorker spots a woman dressed in Easter egg colors, wearing white aerobics sneakers and standing in the middle of the sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon pointing up at Chrysler Building and telling her kids it%26#39;s the Empire State Building, we think she%26#39;s from out of town? No, no, no. Why would you think that? Although we%26#39;re actually much nicer to tourists than is generally assumed. And before people jump all over me, when I travel, then I%26#39;m the obvious tourist and I know it and there%26#39;s nothing wrong with it. It%26#39;s just that, yeah, sometimes you can tell who%26#39;s from out of town.

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Whoops. Cross posted a bit and I can%26#39;t figure out how to edit my earlier post. Obviously the 60% from overseas means 60% non-French.

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%26quot;Is a Parisian who is likely to treat a foreign tourist with contempt likely to treat a French tourist similarly?%26quot;

Parisians will easily spot the tourists, foreigners or not, by the gear they carry: backpack, camera, water bottles, etc. and by the way they walk around (they take their time - we don%26#39;t)

Generally speaking, I think foreign tourists would receive a better treatment because they need more help and guidance.

French tourists, after all, won%26#39;t get lost in their own country and don%26#39;t tend to ask for help.

As Pvoyageuse mentioned, there is the eternal Paris/province rivalry interfering in the relationships...

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%26lt;%26lt;%26lt;%26lt;Do French people visit Paris on vacation the way Americans visit NYC or San Francisco?%26gt;%26gt;%26gt;

Well of course the French visit other places in their own country - why wouldn%26#39;t they? I met many of them while there. If France was your home, wouldn%26#39;t you want to explore it?

%26lt;%26lt;%26lt;Is a Parisian who is likely to treat a foreign tourist with contempt likely to treat a French tourist similarly?%26gt;%26gt;%26gt;

That question seems pretty rude. Why do some people just anticipate that Parisians treat tourists (from anywhere) with contempt?

I think that you just don%26#39;t understand the French.

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I agree: why would anyone presume they will be treated with contempt no matter where they go?? That is not a nice way to characterize any country or nationality.

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We were seated with other English speaking diners including surprisingly French speaking ones at Le Vieux Bistro across from Notre Dame. The locals were seated in the back room together however. It was peculiar for whatever the reason the owner had for the segregation, but it was obvious to us that the French speakers dining with the English speakers were perhaps either from the provinces or Canada. It%26#39;s a personal thing how people treat the other. But, then again, this can occur in any other city too.

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Maybe people have misunderstood the contempt issue - I took it to mean the attitude that people in the south of the UK show for northerners, and New Yorkers show for anyone else. Not hatred, just an acceptance that by sheer bad luck they can never be as good as %26quot;we%26quot; are.

This is the same attitude show all over France: a frind of ours in Normandy says you can%26#39;t trust people from the Loire Valley nor drink the wine (and that the water is no good), and people where we live purse their lips when talking about people from the Poitou - Charente (even though it%26#39;s only 10 miles away). It isn%26#39;t nasty, its just tribalism which has evolved into an almost comedic rivalry.

Me? Even I can tell a Parisian - from the other end of Grand Rue if necessary. They talk strange and they always have their noses up in the air and they drive SO badly. I suspect they also mistreat their dogs. They have to come here to drink proper clean water and eat fresh foods for once in their poor benighted lives.

Simon

http://daysontheclaise.blogspot.com/