Don't like wet weather? You just haven't seen the work of the famous French photographer Christophe Jacrot. Rain makes you look at familiar places in a new way, reveals unnoticed details, hides people under bright umbrellas. “ZagraNitsa” invites you to enjoy a selection of very sincere photos of rainy Paris
Christophe does not like to be frank and share the secrets of his success. What inspired him to take his camera and go take those famous pictures of rainy Paris? In fact, all the answers are in front of you. After all, his works should speak for the artist.
Christophe Jacrot's photobook “Paris in the Rain” became a real hit, giving the author many fans around the world. Then other megacities followed: New York, Chicago, Hong Kong... Jacro does not like to sit still. His only condition is bad weather outside the window. For this, the photographer was even nicknamed “Rain Man.”
Let's plunge into the unique atmosphere of rainy Paris together!
Photo: loeildelaphotography.com
Photo: loeildelaphotography.com
Photo: loeildelaphotography.com
Photo: urban.photogrist.com
Photo: oddstuffmagazine.com
Photo: oddstuffmagazine.com
Photo: urban.photogrist.com
Photo: oddstuffmagazine.com
Photo: oddstuffmagazine.com
Photo: urban.photogrist.com
Photo: oddstuffmagazine.com
Photo: oddstuffmagazine.com
Photo: oddstuffmagazine.com
Photo: urban.photogrist.com
Photo: oddstuffmagazine.com
Photo: oddstuffmagazine.com
Photo: oddstuffmagazine.com
Photo: urban.photogrist.com
Is it raining outside? No problem! Take a waterproof raincoat and a camera - and go ahead, photograph your favorite city.
The capital of France these days is more reminiscent of Venice. Due to heavy rains that have not stopped for several weeks, two dozen departments are already in the flood zone. The water level in the Seine is approaching five and a half meters. Residents are being evacuated from flooded houses. French museums are also under threat; the lower level of the Louvre is already closed. Meanwhile, with great water came a new misfortune - the city was captured by rats. At the same time, meteorologists note that the peak of the flood is still ahead.
“Thank you for visiting” - the welcome sign sticks out helplessly from under the water. The Seine is advancing on Paris. The river level continues to rise at a rate of two centimeters per hour. Houseboats, barges and cafes are being held hostage. River traffic has been stopped. The metro line and the RER high-speed train, whose routes stretch along the river, will not operate for at least a week. Underground, the Seine is already flooding the platforms. Outside, there is also no way to pass or pass. Traffic along the embankments is blocked. Stone stairs lead to nowhere, and in place of sidewalks there are only the tops of lampposts.
“Two years ago we celebrated our wedding anniversary here, drinking champagne on a bench. And now there is water all around. You can't even see that bench. So strange and sad,” says Debbie Komorowski.
Muddy water is also approaching the main museums of the French capital. The lower level of the Oriental Arts Department of the Louvre is closed. Employees are preparing to evacuate exhibits, as in Orsay. Visitors are no longer allowed into the Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral and the Champ de Mars. But it seems that for tourists, and for the townspeople themselves, now the main attraction is not the Louvre or Orsay, but the city itself, plunging into the Seine. Here is the park in front of the Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris has almost completely gone under water.
Zouave. The longer it rains, the more often Parisians use this word. We are talking about a statue that people use to measure when to pack their suitcases. The Zouave is already half under water. Local journalists monitor the statue and report around the clock to see if the soldier has escaped into the Seine.
But a new sight is not for the faint of heart - hordes of rats. As usual, they are fleeing from the sinking embankment. And without natural disasters - a pressing issue for the city. There are two rats for every Parisian. Fleeing from the water, the rodents rushed into the streets. A video is gaining popularity on the Internet: a garbage man filmed a bin infested with rodents. The authorities are reassuring that there are no more rats, they are just being seen more often.
The cause of flooding in the middle of winter is incessant rainfall. Meteorological services called January the rainiest in the last hundred years. Floods occur in two dozen departments of France, this is most of the country. The alarm level has been raised to the penultimate level, orange. South of Paris is one of the epicenters.
Swans usually swim in the middle of the river, but today they swim where the roadway and sidewalks used to be. Literally 20 kilometers from Paris, several cities were flooded. Hundreds of residents were evacuated; the water was rising so quickly that not everyone had time to collect their belongings or, for example, repark their cars.
The last time France found itself under water was just two years ago. No one expected that the Seine would overflow its banks again so quickly. Many have only recently recovered from previous floods. Once again, soldiers and police take out residents on boats.
"This is my home. At first the water rose slowly, and then at one moment it was already here. I measured it - yesterday the water in the house had already risen by 70 centimeters. I had to leave and take all my things to the second floor,” say residents of the suburb.
“I decided to stay in the house to meet overnight guests if necessary. Many have left, an empty street is a great chance for looters. I have already seen some of the characters - they walk around and look closely. That’s why we decided to stay,” says local resident Fabio.
By the weekend, weather forecasters predict that the 30-year-old record will be broken in Paris. No one can predict how the river will behave further. The rains continue.
See Paris and die! You've probably heard it more than once? So, in our humble opinion, there is absolutely no need to die, although you can see Paris. But this is not a city worth dying for. But does such a city even exist? By this I want to say that we were not so impressed by this famous city as to fall in love with it, which our compatriots often do. By “stay alive” I mean “don’t die” :)
Yes, this is France, yes, the capital of this beautiful country, but Paris is a fairly ordinary French city, and there is nothing radically different about it. I liked it, but so did all the other cities in France. Perhaps the incessant rain was to blame?
We arrived in Paris by train from. The tickets were bought in a hurry, since the option with covvaturage (hitchhiking with payment for gasoline) had failed, and at that time it was the only option. We lived in Paris with the guys we found through. However, the path to them was thorny and long.
Since couchsurfing is not suitable for everyone, and it is better to book hotels in Europe in advance, here is what I recommend to you:
Don’t forget to check discounts on the Roomguru service, where you can see prices for the same hotel in different booking systems. Using the example of hotels above:
We arrived late in the evening at the Gare de Lion station. We didn’t know Paris at all, and of course we didn’t know that the metro doesn’t even work until 1 am, and the transfers are even shorter. In general, the metro closed at the most inopportune moment. The navigator, in the most arrogant way, refused to find the guys' address. Only later did we learn that Paris is only the city center, and all the areas nearby are other settlements, and there are no visual boundaries between them. So the guys lived, even in another city, a full 40 minutes on foot from the center of Paris.
So, we are standing at 2 o’clock in the morning, lost on the Place de la Bastille, tormenting the navigator, and vainly trying to find some wifi with our laptop, and a crowd of blacks is approaching us. I somehow immediately lost my mind a little, there are a lot of them. Seeing our faces, one of them immediately began to say - peace, liberty, how can we help? Who would have thought? He even took out his iPhone and tried to connect to the Internet so that we could find a hotel, but apparently that night the great god of the Internet was not merciful. As a result, we walked for 3 hours in Paris at night looking for a hotel with 24-hour reception, and found only a certain shithole for 50 euros. The toad was choking, but I wanted to sleep more.
By the way, I got the impression that the black population in Paris is 50% or more, and sometimes I even wondered if we were in France, if we had been teleported somewhere to Africa.
The next day we arrived to the guys who warmly welcomed us and with whom we happily shared vegetarian food. It's great to meet like-minded people!
For two days we walked through rainy Paris, along its streets littered with leaves, where discarded mattresses were regularly found, went to Notre-Dame de Paris, wandered along the Seine embankment, not far from the pedestrian bridge of the Arts (Pont des Arts ), looked around the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe...
We spent most of the time, as trivial as it may seem, near the Eiffel Tower. Either it was raining, and we hid under it from the rain, then we waited until it got dark and the lights came on.
The final chord was our way to Orly airport. We came with adventures, and left not without them. We almost missed the last metro and bus due to inaccurate information on the Internet, so we had to rush like mad with heavy backpacks.
P.S. If you spend the night at Orly airport, then know that there are very comfortable soft seats there. ()
Photos of Paris and its inhabitants
Sightseeing buses run around Paris - the second floor is perfect in the rain!
Are you already a little tired of cathedrals and shops?
By the way, the question of what to do in Paris in the rain always remains relevant, because if the sun is shining in the morning, this does not mean that it will not rain in 2 hours.
And vice versa, and at any time of the year, mind you.
And the changeable Parisian weather is one of the reasons why I don’t like to buy tickets to somewhere in advance (Eiffel Tower or Disneyland, for example).
It can always rain and ruin the experience.
There is, of course, the option of going to some non-traditional museum, which I wrote about, but here are a few more ideas for walking around Paris without getting wet feet.
Parisian passages
Passages for me are a song, a fairy tale, a miracle! So they were just created for rainy and inclement weather.
At the beginning of the 19th century, when there was not only asphalt, but also cobblestone streets, it was often possible to spend almost the whole day in the arcades without getting your feet wet.
Passages are covered streets or passages between streets, if you like, along which you can sometimes walk quite far, moving parallel to the main street, but almost without going outside.
Here, of course, you need to know where the entrance is and where the exit is, where the passage leads and where you still have to go out into the rain, but sometimes only in order to enter another passage.
Galerie Vivien, Arcade Geoffroy, Arcade Panorama
And this falls into the category of those little Parisian secrets that are not revealed immediately and are not interesting to everyone. But if you have time, desire and curiosity...
What is in the passages? Now there are mainly cafes and shops (mostly antiques, books, souvenirs, handicrafts).
The cost, as a rule, is higher, but no one forces you to buy: you can just wander around, look at it, watch life.
It is curious that all the passages are located only on the right bank of the Seine.
It is interesting that in the passages you will find not only establishments for tourists, but also entrances to hotels and just entrances to residential buildings. Everyday life goes on as usual.
Aquarium of Paris
What you can do in Paris in the rain, even when it pours like buckets, is to challenge fate and go to a place where the inhabitants are wet by definition.
At the Paris Aquarium (Aquarium de Paris-Cinéaqua ) in dryness and comfort, you can see exotic fish, and you won’t even remember about the rain, because there are no windows to the street.
By the way, regardless of the weather, this is also a good place to visit with children, which is located not far from the Eiffel Tower.
The aquarium is located at 5, Avenue Albert de Mun in the 16th arrondissement of Paris near Trocadéro .
Aquaboulevard
Or you can go for a swim in the Parisian Aquaboulevard yourself. That's exactly what it's called Aquaboulevard, not a water park. Of course, we also have water parks.
But again, Aquaboulevard is suitable for visiting with children or if your stay in Paris is 10 days or more. Sometimes you need to give physical rest to your legs and body and psychological rest to yourself, so as not to die from the abundance of impressions.
You can get to Aqua Boulevard by metro (line 8), stop Balard. When exiting the carriage, look at the plan on the platform wall and the signs.
After exiting the metro, you need to walk a little further to the Aquaboulevard building, which is a large complex with gyms, shops, cafes and a cinema.
Catacombs of Paris
Apparently a simple idea! If it rains above our heads, we decide to seek shelter underground!
The old Parisian underground quarries, located in the 14th arrondissement, are connected by a number of galleries, from which are accessible on a 1.7 km guided tour.
In the eighteenth century they were converted into a crypt to bury the remains of six million Parisians transferred from other cemeteries.
Read more about the catacombs in this
Manoir de Paris
Lovers of something mysterious and mythical in rainy and stormy weather can visit the new and unusual Le Manoir de Paris - a Parisian museum that opened relatively recently - in 2011.
