Summer vs. Winter

The high season for tourism has arrived in Paris.  I’ve noticed a gradual increase in the number of people clutching maps and toting rolling suitcases in our neighborhood over the last few months.  There has also been an uptick in the amount of English I hear spoken at the market and the number of hop-on-hop-off buses driving down our street or past J’s office building.  

We’ve often observed that there is an overflow area around tourist attractions filled with crowds from the attraction but that outside that area the tourist density drops sharply.  The difference between the crowds in the middle of the winter and the middle of summer seems to be that the overflow areas are larger so you have to get farther away from the tourist attractions to find things back to normal.

I don’t think I’ve ever walked by Notre Dame during the hours it is open without noticing a line of people waiting to go in.  The place in front of it was filled with people when we visited in the middle of the winter and it’s still crowded now.

December

July

But the sidewalks in the neighborhood around Notre Dame are much more people-filled now than in the low season.  I’ve often walked past the cathedral if I am in the neighborhood because it is really lovely, but working my way through the crowds at this point in the year makes visiting the cathedral a much less pleasant detour.

At the Louvre, the room containing the Mona Lisa has been crowded every time I’ve visited it.

February

July

But the neighboring rooms are much more crowded than they were over the winter.

February

July

And the crowds in the courtyard at the Louvre are no longer limited to people waiting in line to get into the museum.*  The fountains surrounding the glass pyramid in the main courtyard are lined with people all day long.

January

July

While the city does feel quite a bit more crowded, there are benefits to having so many tourists in town.  I get to see a lot of American flags around town on the clothing of many of the tourists from the United States.  And French people seem much more impressed with my beginner French when the city is filled with people that speak even less French than me.

* There are a few entrances to the Louvre and the only place where I’ve seen long lines is the entrance through the pyramid in the pictures above.  There is rarely much of a line at the entrance in the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping center that you enter at 99 Rue de Rivoli or from the Palais Royal - Musée du Louvre metro station.  I would recommend using the underground entrance and leaving the museum through the glass pyramid.