Gone Fishin'

I was in the downtown area near the Opera house today to do some shopping, and I brought along a list of bistros from my guidebook so I would have a place for lunch. That neighborhood has a lot of touristy restaurants that aren't very good so you have to be careful.

All of them were closed.

The French small-business owner has a different attitude toward the profit motive than the rest of us. Most of the restaurants close for at least part of the weekend, often all of it, even though you would think that would normally be the most profitable time.

But here the attitude seems to be that it's not about profit so much as enjoying life. If you're making a good living, why work harder for more money at the cost of time to enjoy it?

That attitude also seems to underlie the "conge," or annual vacation. It's quite common here for a shop or restaurant to just close up for three weeks, leaving only a sign in the window saying "Fermeture -- conges annuels" with the date of their expected return.

In Paris this tends to happen in August, when everyone flees to the countryside and leaves the city to the tourists. In Provence, to which many of the Parisians flee in August, the conges tend to happen in January, as Joey and I discovered to our dismay last week. In Arles, the smallest of the towns we stayed in, we nearly didn't find anyplace to have dinner. Fortunately, the most expensive, Michelin-starred restaurant in town was open and we had one of the best meals of our lives. But it was either that or pizza.

I think it would actually do Manhattanites good to close up shop and move to the Hamptons or Fire Island or the Catskills for the entire month of August. But unfortunately, it will never happen.