Traffic jams, sirens and delays: Here’s what Paris is like right now

What do you give an already crowded city renowned the world over for having absolutely everything except for generous amounts of open space?

Well, as evidenced over three days as a tourist in what’s become the City of No Light Traffic this week, perhaps not an Olympics, an event for which it’s not exactly physically or environmentally suited.

Eiffel Tower Stadium, where the beach volleyball will take place.Credit: Getty Images

Soon, ticketless tourists like me will be barred from wandering most of Paris’ historic centre, where much of the 2024 Games will be staged.

This week therefore offered a final opportunity for an ordinary visitor to witness firsthand the budget-saving prefab Bastille that’s overtaken both banks of the Seine river.

Heavily fenced, gated and padlocked, temporary stadiums for events have been cunningly erected and positioned for maximum televisual effect.

They’ve been placed in between many of the French capital’s monumental edifices and squares such as the Grand Palais, Place de la Concorde and Tour Eiffel.

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo takes her long-promised dip in the Seine.Credit: AP

With only one permanent venue built for the Games (the aquatic centre 23 kilometres from here), these veritable horizontal Eiffels form a scaffolded city within a city, fully clad in pastel-coloured, brand-affirming Paris 2024 bunting.

Within a week, the Seine itself – all going well according to a commendable but wildly ambitious vision – will host history’s first waterborne, stadium-free Olympics opening ceremony. Athletes will be paraded on barges before controlled crowds along the river.

During the penultimate week to the Games opening, wetsuit-clad politicians, from ministers to mayors, attempted to prove that Paris’ iconic (though nauseous green) waterway is now safe for swimming by courageously jumping in.

French authorities have spent billions attempting to sanitise the river in time for these eco-minded Olympics but utterly unpersuaded Parisiens and visitors alike have so far steadfastly not been reaching for their own trunks.

Many Parisiens – wholly unimpressed by the Olympics as a whole and seizing the lucrative opportunity to rent out their abodes for visitors – have already decamped the French capital for their annual summer holidays, leaving the traffic chaos to unwitting tourists like me.

Here for the launch of Qantas’ new ultra long-haul, 17 hours and 20 minutes flights between Perth and Paris, twice I removed myself from traffic-stalled vehicles in order to walk the rest of the way to my hotel.

Nina Metayer, French pastry chef and Amir, French-Israeli singer-songwriter carry the Olympic Torch at the Arc de Triomphe.Credit: Getty Images

On the first morning of our visit, en route to our hotel, our driver Pierre unwittingly transported us from Charles de Gaulle Airport headlong into mammoth, seemingly unpublicised, street closures for the staging of the Olympic torch relay through narrow Paris streets.

In his hapless effort to extricate himself from the gridlock, poor Pierre and his minibus managed to unintentionally pass the same corner boulangerie not once but twice within an hour.

On both occasions, we were stalled outside the bakery long enough, if one chose, to not only pop in and buy a croissant but to eat it outside as well.

Visitors to Paris in the lead-up to the Olympics have been met with traffic chaos.Credit: AP

This journey from the airport, which at normal times takes up to 50 minutes, consumed literally hours.

Each surprise roadblock was supervised by grim-faced gendarmerie who, if not guarding cordons, are constantly screaming around Paris in vehicles incessantly emitting the city’s distinctive hee-haw, hee-haw sirens.

The greater the sound of sirens and flashing blue lights, the greater the fear by the unconditioned Paris interloper that something heinous may have occurred somewhere, especially when a white van with the words “Bomb Squad” also wails by you at speed.

Then there was the simultaneously unnerving and reassuring sight of half a dozen soldiers in black berets, each armed with visible assault rifles, striding past the classic sidewalk cafe where I was breakfasting early one morning.

These Games, after all, are being secured by 45,000 gendarmerie and other security personnel who will effectively outnumber the 10,000 assembled athletes by more than four to one, a probable Games security record.

Yet with so many Parisians having left town, parts of the world’s most visited city, such as the splendid late 17th century Place Vendome one night early this week, were uncharacteristically serene.

For the pre-Games tourist, such pockets of calm made for perfect conditions for bicycling, the most sensible and enjoyable way to get around the city this week.

A newly green Paris now boasts 1000 kilometres of bike paths and public rental bikes are available for use on nearly every avenue corner.

Yet, despite everything, after my three days in a still-beloved Paris that’s pedalling hard in the rapidly diminishing lead-up to its Games, its first for a century, an irresistible conclusion emerges.

Should these bold, high-risk prefab Olympic Games succeed – and it remains one of the biggest “if” since Kipling’s eponymous famous verse – they may actually turn out to be pretty darned fab indeed.

The writer travelled to Paris as a guest of Qantas.