Summer appears to have finally landed in fair Paris, where we lay our scene. Daytime highs in the mid-20's, bright blue skies, and - let us not forget - tourists. May marks the start of the "shoulder", or "mid-season" for tourists, and even though we're still quite a ways away from the high season (wherein small armies of foreign nationals descend for days at a time), the key congestion areas are already starting to fill up. The information kiosks in the métro and light rail stations, for instance, are now finding themselves hidden behind ersatz walls made of wheeled luggage and cargo shorts.
Of course, tourism is an important industry for France, which receives some 75 to 80 million tourists annually, many of whom spend some or all of that time in Paris (as an aside, consider that the entire French republic - overseas holdings and all - has a population of about 64 million). There is scarcely a block in Paris that doesn't have something which caters to tourists, be it a hotel, an ex-pat bar, or a tacky souvenir store. That said, Paris is not France in the same way that Toronto is not Canada: while Paris is undoubtedly the most "important" city of the republic, it's not necessarily representative of the nation as a whole.
In other words, it's not as if the entire country is geared towards accepting tourists - Paris is the exception, rather than the rule. Living, as i do, in the metropolis, i sometimes forget that France is a functioning, self-sustaining country, with socially and economically diverse population spread across an equally varied geographical base. There are other large cities (such as Lyon and Marseille), small cities (such as Strasbourg and Bordeaux), towns, villages, hamlets, and even the occasional solitary farmhouse. There are wide coastal plains, enormous mountain ranges, verdant rolling hills, river valleys, forests, and even the occasional canyon or gorge (including some rather impressive ones in the Massif Central area). There are, in effect, an abundance of things to see, people to meet, and areas to explore which are not Paris - and which are often left un-seen by people who don't happen to live near them.
No trip to France is complete without (at least) spending a day or two in the metropole, and there's certainly lots to see and do here in the capital - but there's a lot to see and do in the rest of the country, too. Luckily, France has an exceptional rail network which, strikes aside, is efficient and reasonably priced. This allows both tourists and Parisians alike to explore the country at large, and return to the 75th at their leisure - myself included. :)
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