Paris feels very empty.  There are few American tourists around and almost no Asian tourists.  Most are European.  Restaurants which seat hundreds barely have 75 people.  The Paris Flea Market was very sparsely populated, probably from a mixture of gloomy weather, COVID, and online shopping trends.  

It is the largest antique market in the world and is roughly two centuries old.  We only saw a small portion of it, which took many hours.  Conditions were not ideal.  It was chilly and raining, which makes touristing more challenging.  The market was closing down as we left, the low winter sun of Paris leisurely setting.  

Tours and guides exist to help the uninitiated work their way through the 17 acre market, which is actually comprised of many smaller markets all smacked together.

Orbiting the antique market is a dense ring of stalls selling counterfeit goods with roaming pickpockets.  Every brand name was available, from Nike to Apple.  It’s unclear if the products are knock-offs or simply stolen.  Lately, organized crime syndicates in the U.S. have been “liberating” entire truck loads of merchandise — think an entire CVS or Best Buy resupply semi — and then selling everything on Amazon, an online flea market available from the comfort of your home.  Cheap always comes with a price.

Had I thousands of Euros to casually spend, I could easily have purchased a beautiful dinning room table and several other pieces for our rental house in North Carolina.  The table I didn’t buy for 3,000, plus another 1,000 for shipping, will forever haunt me as the one that got away.  It was a spectacular item.  Alas.

COVID news dominates the airwaves.  The new, dreaded Omicron variant is sweeping the world as flights are canceled and people hunker down.  RBD and I have a headache from rolling our eyes at the handwringing.  I’d root more for humanity if our decisions weren’t consistently so emotional and spectacularly idiotic. 

There are always variants.  This is why you should get vaccinated.  Because a virus can only evolve inside an infected host where it is multiplying rapidly.  When it evolves, variants inevitably get created.  There are countless variants likely circulating in the worldwide population at this very moment.  RNA viruses do nothing but vary their genetic code.  This is a fact of microbial life. Want to stop variants?  Get vaccinated.  

Closing borders at this late stage does not work. It does, however, score cheap political points for those in power, who essentially are bullying less developed nations.  It also encourages people to lie about where they’ve been.  Not good. A country like England can say, “Look, we’re banning flights to and from South Africa.  We’re doing something!”  It’s political theater. It doesn’t make you safer, it makes you feel safer.

That said, maybe everyone freaking out and canceling their trips to Africa will be what enables us to go to Botswana in June?  RBD and I have quite gotten used to traveling with the world to ourselves.  It’s selfish, though, as we alone cannot support an entire tourism industry. 

Our trip is coming to a close.  Only two more entries before my exciting life as adult and world traveler conclude, and my little life as a student begins again.