April in Paris - Why And Why Not

PARIS -- I have never been to Paris in April and certainly not in springtime. Since I first set eyes on this achingly beautiful City of Lights in 1972 when I was young and fancy free, I have always come in autumn, sometimes in summer and only once in winter.

I was set on autumn because that's when everybody goes back to school and the oppressive summer crowds, not to mention the heat, seem to magically disappear. Airfares and hotel prices tumble down and reservations are easier to make. You have Paris all to yourself. Or so you imagine.

Last year, I made it a point to experience my first July 14th or Bastille Day celebrations -- watching the Republican Guards on horseback prance down the Champs Elysee, dancing and boozing in the streets and all that.

Some 10 years before, I remember arriving in the dead of winter to savor my one and only Parisian Christmas. I was masochistic and alone.

But I held the line on spring.

Only this week did I realize how silly I have been all those wasted years. I should have figured out that the best time to come to Paris is precisely when everybody says it would be absolutely miserable. I blame my New York chauvinist outlook for this terrible lapse of judgment.

But, of course, New York is always awful in spring. Winter tends to drag on and on, sometimes extending deep into April. Always there are those nasty April showers and you could get soaking wet. The temperature goes up and down 40 degrees during the day and if you aren't too bundled up, you're too thinly dressed you might as well be asking for pneumonia.

I should have known New York isn't Paris and never will be. When there's foul weather in the Big Apple, you just have to rush home and watch TV. The place is positively ugly and nasty when the weather goes bad.

Paris seems to thrive with adversity. It's teeming with unexpectedly nice places you wouldn't mind being confined to for a couple of hours or a day. A misadventure can quite easily turn into a romantic interlude. You can sit in some sidewalk café to watch the world go by or gaze out to some landmark, say the Eiffel Tower, defiant against the mist over the Seine.

Whenever I warble Singing in the Rain in mock or real despair, I now prefer to think of Paris rather than New York.

Perhaps it was beginner's luck. It must have helped that I flew in from humid and grey Manila into a cool and bright city, its lovely Belle Epoque architecture bathed in impressionist sunlight, its tree-lined streets bursting with green and huge banks of flowers for the delectation of all.

Champs Elysee and everywhere else huge crowds gather look different. Perhaps it's because there aren't that many Americans, Japanese or foreign tourists yet. The student hordes don't get out of school till after Easter. You hear less American or Asian accents, although you can't tell nationalities anymore because they all wear uniforms provided by Benetton, Levis, Nike, Swatch, Prada and whatever may be the latest status symbol.

I guess there's a Paris for every taste of preference. Some come to be "finished" or socially upgraded. Others for the promise of adventure or romance. Many just to be able to say they've been here and done that.

My Paris has something to do with getting lost in a civilized place where you can avail or not avail of creature comforts and nobody bothers with you. To each his or her own.

Indeed, my ideal city is a cross between Paris and New York, between beauty and power, timeless grace and raw energy. Purists from both cities will probably disagree, but I take it as a good sign that Paris is becoming more like New York, and New York becoming more like Paris. They're meeting in the middle and that could be for the best.

Because I am a compulsive walker and not a museum stalker, I judge cities by the way they grab me as I prowl into a neighborhood, poke my nose into some shop or get into a nice conversation with a perfect stranger.

The Paris I first got to know in the 1970s was radical, unkempt and cheerless. I stayed in a dreary student pension in the Left Bank and ran around with devout Maoists in the Marais, then a dangerous slum area.

But the Sorbonne and much of the Left Bank have become a mecca for the "gauche caviar" (caviar leftists) and boutique liberals. The Marais has turned into some Greenwich Village, only more chic and expensive.

I have been left with only two neighborhoods to walk around the Montmartre and that part of Montparnasse that's within the orbit of the Jardin de Luxembourg, my favorite park. Of course, both areas are hemmed in by unpleasant forces, ever on the advance -- pornography and tourist hordes for the former and hoity-toity gentrification for the latter.

But there's still enough whiff of the old bohemia and genteel poverty to keep me coming back for more. Otherwise, I just haunted the quaint bookstores and antique shops in the Grand Passages of the Richeliue-Drout quarter where I now make it a pint to park my soul once a year.

Nelson's A. Navarro's e-mail address: [email protected].