I've been reading in quite a few Paris blogs about the rudeness of the French - struggles in the supermarket, battles in banks, fights in the, um, Fauchon. I can't deny that I've had my own experiences of 'c'est pas ma faut', but I saw something yesterday that put some perspective into things.

We were walking along Boulevard Poissonnière in the early evening and as usual it was fairly full of tourists. There's not a lot touristy about the Grand Boulevards, but there is an excess of hotels in the area, so that's the only reason I can think of to explain why there's always so many tourists (musée Grévin? Probably not - more like Hard Rock Cafe). Actually it's amusing to see how many of them put on their best clothes for their first night out in Paris, and then look completely wrong in a, well, let's face it, not so swanky area.

But I digress (in an inverted snobbily way); there was a guy approaching the tourists and the response he was getting was awful. One lady dived away with a look of pure revulsion, another grabbed her bag tightly and ran. I'm sure if there was enough of them, it would have hit the old biddy critical mass, and we'd have had a mob lynching. Fortunately neither of these ladies had any mace.

He approached me, and asked me where the post office was. That was all he wanted to know. We directed him and off he went...

A bit of street wariness against pickpockets is one thing, but this was a sad sight.