Paris Has Changed A Lot And In A Good Way!
Anna’s annual Euretina Congress was held in Paris this year so we would be traveling to France for that, followed by a smaller conference in Florence, Italy, and finally a getaway for a few days in Venice. This would be the first time we had been back to Paris since 2019 and although we have fun every time we are there, it’s never been how the city seems in movies and on TV. As I wrote after the first time we both went to Paris a decade ago, the expectation of the city was far from reality; the streets were dirty, full of drunks and bums, and smeared with dog turds and the people were really rude and stuck up. However, as I learnt back in 2000 when I was still living in Australia, host cities for the Olympic Games tend to clean up substantially so it would be interesting to see if Paris was any different.
Tuesday, September 2, 2025
We arrived and settled into our hotel, SO/Paris, at around 4:30pm and not only was this place impressive, but it was in a great spot too, because Anna knew there would be nothing much around the conference centre where the Euretina Congress was being held. We spent a bit of time wandering around a cool area near our hotel to which we’d definitely be returning, but we also had a dinner reservation in Bonnie, the hotel’s restaurant so we sat in the bar, both of which had a 360° view of the city, for a drink or two until it was time to go upstairs to eat. It’s kind of redundant going into how good the food was, because any assumption would probably be a correct one, and when we were done we hit the street again to find a good spot to pull up a seat for the night, finally settling on a great little dive bar that played my type of music, but we were a bit tired after about 15 hours in transit and Anna had to attend the conference in the morning so we were home early by our standards.
Our first evening in Paris:
Wednesday, September 3, 2025
Anna was really only busy in the morning, but it was about a 30-minute Metro ride to the conference centre which meant I had a couple of hours to myself to check out the same area of the city from the previous day properly and three things struck me almost immediately that were in stark contrast to previous times here:
- The streets were really clean, there wasn’t much trash on the ground and I didn’t encounter any dog shit at all.
- Although we had passed an area of tents on our way from the airport, there were far fewer homeless people and beggars. Sure, there were still some, but you’ll find that in most major cities, however, here there were only a fraction of what there used to be.
- Service staff and people working in shops were really friendly! It seems stereotypical, but in the past the bulk of them were just straight up rude and dismissive, but now they were chatting and making smalltalk.
Anna joined me mid-afternoon and she came to the exact same conclusion, it definitely wasn’t just our collective imagination. That afternoon we did a hell of a lot of shopping, especially me taking advantage of being able to find a lot of quirky clothes that actually fit me, but we eventually had to go back to the hotel to change and then out again, because once more Anna had reservations, but they weren’t for a restaurant this time. We traveled out again to briefly meet up with her friend, Amir, for a drink and some snacks and when he had to leave we found a spot for a quick dinner and then at 9:30pm it was time for the Moulin Rouge. I knew it was a cabaret show, but still had no idea what to expect. The Moulin Rouge website tries to give the show a bit of a rundown with this description of the its four main scenes:
1st SCENE
THE MOULIN ROUGE IN THE PAST AND PRESENT, THE MOULIN ROUGE FOREVER
The lights dim, the curtain goes up… The entire troupe comes on stage to the delight of the enthralled audience. Finding itself in the “Gardens” of the Moulin Rouge, the audience discovers the magical ambiance of this fabulous venue. From the very first moment, the audience is captivated by the beauty of the costumes and sets.
2ND SCENE
THE PIRATES
What can possibly happen to a pirate on a boat anchored in Indonesia? A Dream? Love? Once onshore, we find priestesses, a Gorgon in her temple swarming with snakes, bejewelled women and tigresses. Will Sandokan offer his treasures to the woman of his dreams? Or will we witness the sacrifice of love in the pit of pythons?
3RD SCENE
AT THE CIRCUS
The circus comes to town… with its troupe of clowns, mimes, acrobats, jugglers and Siamese twins! Colourful scenes and flamboyant music culminate in a grand parade of the Moulin Rouge dancers.
4TH SCENE
THE MOULIN ROUGE FROM 1900 TO…
The Moulin Rouge pays tribute to the women of Paris throughout history : on the 14th of July, at the Liberation of Paris… Featuring Java and Boogie tunes. Time passes, leading to a new generation of women, more beautiful and liberated than ever!
As the climax of this tribute: the world’s most famous Cancan, danced today by our magnificent Doriss Girls.
Now that doesn’t really sound like the type of thing that I would get right into and tell everyone how fantastic it was, but the description doesn’t even begin to do it justice, because some of the athletic skill involved is unbelievable, each scene having one standout act. The first scene contained a man and woman on roller-skates on a platform no larger than about three metres (10′) in diameter performing some insane tricks while perpetually spinning at a speed that seemed similar to that of a centrifuge. The second had a woman fall into a tank of water, simulating drowning while doing an underwater dance routine and contortion act, at times holding her breath for seemingly about a minute. Act three was probably the most impressive with an incredibly ripped woman doing upside down contortions that eventually culminated in her firing a bow and arrow with her feet while in a headstand and hitting the target perfectly. There were also other gymnasts and contortionists between acts while all of the sets and cast was changing, but as an added bonus the bulk of the show was gorgeous women dancing topless for 90 minutes so it was definitely worth it!
When the show was done we returned to our hotel and went to the bar, which seemed extremely packed for a Wednesday night and the bulk of the people there were strikingly good looking, a nearby table seemingly being occupied by models. There were plenty of people trying to get the perfect Instagram shot too and because I was wearing a covalent bond- themed shirt and jacket how could I not take the piss out of them, striking terrible poses while Anna laughed hysterically, everybody else in the room completely oblivious that I was parodying them, before handing my phone back to me so I could capture some of her doing the same.
Obviously we couldn’t take photos during the Moulin Rouge, but we got some inside and out of the theatre plus some I scanned from the programme, as well as with Amir, and us being idiots at the bar:
Thursday, September 4, 2025
Thursday would be relatively relaxed for me, because Anna would be at the conference the entire day so I had plenty of time to kill, meaning I would just be exploring other areas of the city, periodically getting stranded in cafes along the way due to heavy downpours that seemed to be a daily mid-afternoon occurrence. My morning, however, began in a cringeworthy manner when I was getting coffee at the hotel cafe. The girl behind the counter was Asian and when a group of older Americans asked her where she was from she told them that she was Vietnamese, but had been adopted by a French family. This seemed to set them off, probably in the mistaken belief that not much had changed in the 50 years since the war combined with an inability to differentiate between race and nationality. “Have you ever been back to Vietnam? You’re not really free to do much over there. Can you do much?” and the freedom rant continued even further until the girl calmly replied, “I don’t know, I’m French.”. This confused them so they just moved on, chatting amongst themselves about what had just happened.
I spent the day walking around and after being served a drink during an aforementioned storm by a guy who looked remarkably like Greta Thunberg (although the photo I discreetly snapped doesn’t truly capture likeness) I began walking home, changed into one of the shirts I had bought the previous day, a blue number with travel adapter plugs on it, and caught the Metro down to the convention centre where we would be meeting up with some old friends, a few of whom we hadn’t seen in quite a long time. Anna and myself had been texting back and forth a lot of the day about different things at the conference, but it wasn’t until I made some small talk with some of our mutual acquaintances that I found out that over 800 people had attended her presentation that morning! Seriously, when you look at the image below, despite also having balcony seating, there were people sitting in the aisles watching as well! These are definitely among the moments that truly make me proud of what she does.
We continued on to have dinner with a few of those pals who were fortunate enough to be able to tag along before the two of us continued on, finishing off the evening with, after wandering around near our hotel for another cool spot, a few beers at that same dive bar from Tuesday night:
Friday, September 5, 2025
It was Friday so that meant tonight would be the night of nights where the conference gala dinner would be taking place, this time on a boat cruising through Paris along the Seine. Anna had the afternoon off so we spent the day once more in other new Parisian neighbourhoods, as well as some we had already visited so we could both pick up things that we had initially been in two minds about purchasing and had now ultimately decided to go for, but once again we couldn’t be out too long.
Once it was time we arrived at the meeting point for the gala and gradually boarded the boat, us discreetly organising with our friends to all be on the same table so the conversation would be mostly interesting, and then we were off down the river Seine. The organisers tend to go all out for these dinners and the menu definitely didn’t disappoint, however, there was no beer, but it’s a good thing there was plenty of free champagne.
Obviously being a medical dinner the conversation predominately consisted of topics that I was unable to partake in, but having picked to sit with our international pals there was plenty of smalltalk to be had too. The view from the boat was great, but unfortunately my seat faced inwards so instead of seeming a little antisocial and perpetually having my back to everyone, I decided to go up onto the open upper deck. Our Spanish mate, Roberto, was up there having a smoke, but few others had realised that we had found the best seat in the house, an unobstructed view of the city as we wound around the river with the occasional U-turn bringing us down another canal, taking in the gorgeous scenery as dusk approached. We decided to climb back downstairs to see if the first course of the meal had arrived yet and Roberto and I convinced our significant others about how spending a night in the beautiful breeze with the lights of the city was a far superior option to sitting at a table talking about work so Rosa and Anna followed us back upstairs. We would periodically go down to check for food and then return, the word getting around that the upper deck was the place to be and soon almost everyone was up there and the business-talk almost ceased to exist, everyone just embracing the view and trying to get photos of everything there was to be seen. This continued throughout the night between eating and getting more drinks, at one point almost resulting in me sitting on the stem of a broken champagne glass that someone had absentmindedly placed on a bench seat to the side, missing my butt by just an inch or two. Obviously the highlight of this boat ride was passing right by the Eiffel Tower illuminated in the dark, but by 10:30pm the cruise was over and we were back on dry land.
Anna knew that after a night of champagne I’d probably like a beer, an assumption that was 100% correct, however, there was nothing much nearby. This meant catching the Metro once more and when we boarded we were met with multiple pools of vomit in our train carriage, memories of Paris from a time past flooding back. We came to the conclusion that a mini pub crawl was on the cards and we found a couple of places, but it wasn’t long before we decided that returning to our hotel would be best.
The view from our cruise and with some conference buddies:
Saturday, September 6, 2025
One of our absolute favourite places here is the Paris Flea Market so that’s how we were going to spend our final day in town. It was quite a trek out there that required us changing trains several times, but Anna had already found a place for lunch nearby. When we had finished eating we walked around to where the market was supposed to be, but all we found was rows upon rows of fake goods, bad t-shirts, and dodgy people walking by trying to sell us phone cases and sim cards, the type of place where you put your wallet in your front pocket and jam your hand firmly over it, not the market we had come before. That’s because what we were looking for was a little bit around the corner and as soon as we got there we immediately remembered why we had come back. This market is full of stalls selling a ton of vintage items from records to pinball machines, as well as clothing and accessories too so our afternoon was planned, just wandering around. One extremely annoying thing that would become a recurring theme over the coming days was that there was a large tour group being guided through there, despite this being a multilevel building with extremely narrow walkways and stalls so when they stopped or entered anywhere it was almost impossible to get around them. Anna also got a dose of that nostalgic French hospitality that we had previously expected when she wanted to try on a dress, the shopkeeper telling her she’d just break it. I’ve taken plenty of photos in this flea market before so I didn’t bother this time, they’d just be the same, however, one thing I learnt on this occasion was that it’s amazing how many compliments an Andre the Giant t-shirt will get you in retro stores in France.
some of the people we met in the pub
We returned back to drop off our stuff and had a drink in the buzzing hotel bar again before some dinner and hitting the town one final time. We loved that bar that we had been to twice already, but we also didn’t want to become creatures of habit, so this time we eventually found a completely different dive bar, another place that had great music, a bunch of unique beers, and once more as tends to happen in a this type of place, we left with a bunch of new friends, albeit significantly younger and kind of unstable. When we returned to the hotel there was a roped off line down the side with security, but we had our room key that let us use a private elevator. Curiosity got the better of us so we decided to have one last drink at the insanely packed bar and it turned out there was a pretty popular night club above the restaurant that the people downstairs were queuing to get into. I guess this is what VIP treatment feels like.
Sunday, September 7, 2025
It was our day to fly out for the second stage of this trip, another conference in Florence, Italy followed by a final few days in Venice so Anna could take a break, but not before stopping off at the apartment of our friend, Polinaer, and her family for a ton of great cheese. I’m going to have to stick the stories of those next two stops, as well as some trips earlier in the year to Taipei and Seoul on the laterbase for when I have a little more free time in the future, because again we have a far more interesting adventure coming up in a few days that’s definitely going to take precedence, no matter how much fun we had on those other expeditions.
Cheers for the cheese!
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