The Season In Review
Since the first lockdown in March my husband and I have kept our outings to the bare minimum. Peddling around on 2 wheels has been the most welcomed activity to get away, get some sun and fresh air, although we’ve done more walking recently and taking loads of tourist pics capturing what it’s been like here. Many businesses have done their best to adapt and operate as close to normal as possible. You may find notifications on some doors offering easy pick-up and/or delivery after placing an online/telephone order to help mitigate the amount of time customers would have to spend inside the businesses. Many owners have moved their operations right up to the doorway or even out at the store front so there’s no need to walk inside at all. Outdoor markets can still operate while masks are obligatory everywhere. Most people are wearing them. However, it’s hard ignore restaurants that haven’t been able to open back up with chairs empty and/or stacked away behind the window. If they didn’t already offer outdoor dining, small rectangular designations, usually made of pallets while some were much more embellished, took over into parts of the streets when the city came out of the first lockdown to catch up on lost revenue. It’s the larger eateries near (normally) tourist-heavy hot spots that haven’t been able to resume. Dining out and tourism is part of Paris’ identity and it’s hard to imagine what will happen in the next year.
Christmas decorations line the streets, but Christmas Villages were reduced to certain areas. The really big one in La Defense is not happening this year. It’s usually such a beautiful display flooded with tourists and locals in between gift shops and food stops. My husband and I came across a glass maker working in front of a pastry shop whose wife worked the display inside. They normally have a setup in a Christmas village, but it wasn’t possible this year. There is a small set up at City Hall with rustic wooden sculptures, a few activities for the kids like carousel rides, and a few shops including one that sold face masks.
Couvre-feu… It means “cover fire.” Where does “curfew” come from? In order to prevent unattended fires from becoming out of control during Medieval Europe, a bell was rung at a certain time as a signal for everyone to cover their fires for the evening. France began a second lockdown at the end of October with a curfew when case numbers were climbing rapidly again. People are free to move about now, but there is still a curfew which will continue into next year. Testing sites popped up everywhere and are free to everyone. It helped give some confidence for families to get together for the holidays. It also helps find out where new hot spots might appear. They’re in front of pharmacies, by the park, the mall, and offering antigen tests with results in about 15-20 minutes. New Year’s Eve will will be a bit quieter for most, thoughtful, just plain different. (Side note – Germany has banned fireworks for New Years so this will be interesting.) Previously, the curfew was 9pm. However, the numbers weren’t going down enough so curfew was moved up to 8pm… New Years Eve has an 8pm curfew. Christmas came and went. Other countries have entered some kind of new lockdown after a new strain of coronavirus was confirmed to be twice as infectious and we’re possibly facing a third lockdown. For now, curfew is moving up to 6pm very soon for certain areas mostly on the East side of France. What’s surprising is that Paris isn’t one of the areas affected by the new curfew.
The glimmer of hope, of course, is the beginning of vaccinations in several countries with rare allergic reactions. A number of employees at a care facility in Germany accidentally received 5 times the normal dose all at once and seem to be doing ok. Wouldn’t it be lovely if they ended up being permanently immune or even imbued with such a large dose? Wishful thinking of course. For now we look forward to the first dose which for us probably won’t come until the Spring and who knows how long of a wait until the second. For now we keeps our spirits up with whatever we can find centering; reflecting on everything that’s changed; sending condolences, hope, and well wishes toward friends and loved ones; and cautiously tiptoeing, blindly running, reluctantly dragged into an unceremonious new year.
