Paris-plage and other Paris, France Local Custom Tips

Paris-plage is an initiative of the Paris municipality to bring the beach to the Parisians who cannot or are too lazy to go to the sea, to go there or simply want to get tanned. This enterprise suggest turning the proverb if the mountain will not go to Mahomet, let Mahomet go to the mountain into if the Parisians don't go to the beach, the beach goes to the Parisians! So, it was decided to provide a beach along the Seine.
Paris-plage has been existing since 2002 and it has proved very successful. My parents and I saw also artists who were building sculptures of sand, as the last photo shows.
The only disadvantage is that people are not allowed to bathe in the river.

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My parents and I realized with pleasure that such a big city as Paris has many dustmen who keep it clean (at least in the centre), while many Italian cities haven't got any. That's why my father photographed one of them while he was washing a street.

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One of the customs that most shocks foreign tourists from outside Europe when they visit Paris (which is in most cases their first journey to France) is the social act of kissing people on the cheeks upon meeting and often upon departing, too. This gesture is called in French se faire la bise (litterally "to do the peck") and, unlike what people may think, it is not typically Parisian, since it originated in Bretagne before spreading across France and most European country.
Since the number of kisses on the cheeks varies from one region to the other, but also from a village to the neighbouring one, you should always know how many kisses are supposed to be exchanged. From what I have seen and read, Parisians give either two or four kisses, but I'm not sure of when they give two and when four. I guess that two kisses are for people one meets every day and four are for people one meets from time to time. I also suppose that when one meets a group of several people and has to do the bise to all of them (yes, that is socially compulsory!), one gives two kisses because four would take too long.
However, beware that in the rest of Ile-de-France the number of kisses changes, but I don't know what the praxis is, since I have never seen it. Follow the links above to learn more about the bise.

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Website: http://combiendebises.free.fr