To have found certain parts of Paris edgy

[Sheeled]

I stayed in Belleville, which was ok. Walked ina respectable area today, there was a guy possibly in his 30s, clearly.not right mentally verbally harassing and jostling people asking for money. Didn't see much police presence anywhere.

There were big groups of men, many of whom were shouting at each other and again many looked quite unwell, around the main train stations.

Large areas around the stations smelled I mean really smelled of urine.

A lot of people seemed really unhappy and afraid.

Don't know if this has always been the case or are we simply talking about some areas. I dont think Ill be visiting again in a hurry.

I live in Paris and there is a lot to love, especially once you venture away from the Eiffel Tower and other big landmarks/tourist attractions. But yes, there are some very pissy smelling areas, there are a lot of beggars on the metro and people sleeping in tents. Gare du Nord is horrible, Chatelet is an absolute hole - although has some great, cheap places to sit and people watch with a glass of wine- and there are an awful lot of shoplifters you need to be conscious of. But it’s one of the great cities of the world - I feel the same way about London and New York, they aren’t perfect and they all have issues with homelessness and crime too, and yet I love walking around them. But then I’ve also lived in cities outside of Europe which had much, much bigger problems with crime, femicide and poverty, so perhaps I am bit desensitised and quite blasé about cities like Paris where in general you can freely walk around without fearing for your life. I dunno, I think Paris is great but you do have to realise before going that it’s not all croissants, romance and trips to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

I love Paris but it has always smelled of urine. Great wafts of it every so often, especially in the metro.

We went to Paris 12 years ago and I actually thought it would be somewhere I'd love to live when we retired.

Went back last year and hated it. It looked dirty and rundown in so many once lovely areas and I actually felt really unsafe.

The area around the station was always a bit sketchy but was ten times worse. Couldn't wait to leave the place!

It certainly is real.

Yeah, I watched Emily in Paris already knowing the city well, and I was pretty shocked by how much they'd sanitised and Disneyfied it.

Yeah, you definitely get a work out on the steps 😬 My major beef with the Metro is that it isn't laid out as efficiently as the Tube- there's lots of journeys where you have to make 2 changes, vanishingly unusual for the Tube.

But as compensation you get those beautiful cast iron elevated lines....the no. 2 from Barbes- Rochechouart to Stalingrad, that one in the South from Bir- Hakeim, the 5 where it crosses the Seine on the Viaduc d' Austerlitz and plunges straight the the first floor facade of the Gare d' Austerlitz...

And the names....pure poetry. Reamer Sebastopol, Marcadet- Poissoniers...

I was on the Metro the other day and some lad started playing his stupid tinny music loud. Was really impressed by the amount of other passengers who swivelled their heads and fixed him with a death stare. He turned it off sharpish 😊

If anyone finds Paris rough and dirty they're not going to like Marseille.

I fucking love Marseille.

I hated Paris and would never go back.
It's the only city I've felt unsafe in.

I lived in Lyon for 6 months and can highly recommend it for a weekend for some of the things people go to Paris for - food, architecture, museums, bit of shopping. Not in winter though - it's near the Alps and I have never been so cold.

There are a couple of places to avoid but they are quite small.

I stayed in Pigalle as a teenage art student and it was rather eye-opening.

Funnily enough, we lived in one of the areas @Fnssc is raving about for a decade. It's livelier now than back when we lived there, but I really disliked it at night because it was so deserted everywhere except the main streets.

I love Paris. Never stayed in Belleville, but I've been there and it's definitely on the grittier side. Lovely park and an awesome little Chinatown.

I love it too. The only bit of Marseille I thought was properly unnerving was the restaurant/bar where they filmed that dumb Colin Firth proposal scene in Love Actually, because people kept coming in to take photos.

Paris is racist as fuck, that’s the dodgiest thing about it

I've been out at night in both Peckham and Brixton and they are buzzing with new bars and lots of people out having a good time wth no trouble

Marseille is the most dangerous city in Europe. Even more than Birmingham. No way in hell will I go there.

I loved Marseille too.

I was having dinner with a friend (he trades securities at a major investment bank) and said he once went to Peckham for brunch and thought he was going to get mugged.

Cool your jets. There are definitely some ropey bits in the northern districts (13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th arrondissements) and if you end up there you must have got seriously lost but the areas around vieux port and Le Panier and coastal areas are great.

I first went to Paris in 1994 on a French exchange and the only thing I still remember is that Paris smelled of wee.
I went back for a wedding in 2006, a very fancy suburb and that also stank of wee.

@Fnssc yoir securities trader friend went to Peckham for brunch? Aye right. Sure he did.

Your posts would take a lot less time if you just said you were scared of black people.

My DD used to go to Marseille quite a lot as her ex-partner lived there. She loved it too! Said it was full of life and character, musicians in the streets, etc.

Marseille is great and has been cleaned up a lot in the centre win recent years. There are still a lot of challenges with drugs and gangs. There are also some areas I would be wary of at night as a non local. But overall it is a great place to visit.

I love Marseille. Leave London on the early eurostar and you can be enjoying a glass of rose in the port by lunchtime.

Will nobody think of the finance bros 😱

It seems to me as if Paris is roughly a generation behind London when it comes to racial integration.

Back in the 90s when I first started going the dominant culture was definitely white French, and people of immigrant backgrounds were definitely very much marginalised.

Now some POC are starting to have a seat at the table, and there is more of a sense that Paris is a multicultural city, but there's still loads of pushback (cf many of the winning candidates for the recent mayoral elections in the banlieues are POC, but they've had a lot of online racial abuse).

It's why I find it weird that PPs found it strange that I had a masala dosa in Paris. It's a city of a hundred cuisines and cultures now.

I had an ex from Marseille too although I never got to visit with him.