Olympic Dispatch: Days before the Games, Paris is very, very quiet
Yahoo Sports’ Jay Busbee is on the ground in Paris, bringing you stories from both inside and outside the arenas.
PARIS — With days to go before the Olympics begin, the heart of Paris is silent.
It’s the first thing you notice when you step out of the Metro staircase and into the Paris sunshine. No horns blare at tourists wandering onto the Quai Saint-Michel. No engines rev along the Seine River. There’s only wind, and conversation, and the gentle, tourist-luring sigh of an accordion playing “La Vie en Rose” somewhere nearby.
The second thing you notice is the reason behind all this silence. The area along the Seine is as locked-down as a military installation, blocked to all vehicular traffic for the duration of the Opening Ceremony and beyond. Fences rise all along the storied river’s banks. Police officers, security forces patrol every bridge, every street, every corner. Cameras are everywhere, observing. It’s calm via lockdown, and the quiet in the streets is similar to the summer of 2020 … minus the overarching dread, of course.
There’s something in the air in Paris, a peculiar French brew of anticipation and pessimism. You walk a few blocks away from the Seine, and life is proceeding as normal. This is Paris, after all, not a college town on a fall Saturday. The city has hosted the world’s most awe-inspiring events for literal centuries, and not even the worldwide spectacle of the Olympics is enough to break Parisians out of their routine.
Many locals have simply packed up and left town for the duration of the Games, leaving behind the whirl and chaos of fences and security and closed-off familiar routes. Many who remain are appreciating the unexpected moment of calm that might never come around in quite this way again.
On Wednesday, just across the river from the still-rebuilding Notre Dame Cathedral, Parisians and tourists alike lounged at nearly empty outdoor cafes. There were no lines of tourists snaking in front of Shakespeare & Co. bookstore. The only sound in the small courtyard in front of the famed left-bank institution was the rattle of an American journalist dragging his 43-pound suitcase over the worn cobblestones. (Paris: Not the most suitcase-friendly town.)
Another unexpected sight in downtown Paris: the Seine itself. Once a sewage-ridden slurry, the river has undergone a $1.5 billion cleaning to allow for Olympic swimming, and it certainly looks a whole lot cleaner now than it has in the past. Jumping into it still doesn’t seem like a great idea — whether because of the current or because of the lingering pathogens within, make your call — but at least it makes for a prettier foreground for all those Eiffel Tower photos, and a less fetid stage for all the Opening Ceremony’s barges.
Once that Ceremony kicks off, the City of Lights will blossom to life, and the full cacophony of a 21st-century mega-city will come roaring back. For now, though, Paris is enjoying these final moments of calm for as long as they last.
