Filthy Paris Streets

Paris officials have blamed a "political smear campaign" after angry comments and pictures of filthy streets spread on social media criticising a "trashed Paris".  The hashtag "saccage Paris" went viral over Easter, with many of the messages accusing the city's Socialist leadership of ruining the capital.  They complained of uncollected rubbish, damaged pavements and graffiti.  The Paris deputy mayor said keeping the city clean had always been a problem.

However, the social media campaign was a "travesty of reality", Emmanuel Grégoire insisted. Paris was densely populated and cleaners were doing all they could, he told RTL Radio, but he said the French capital was no different from London, whose mayor Sadiq Khan faced exactly the same issues.

Among the thousands of tweets, Cyrille Capuano said that for years Paris had not lived up to its reputation as the city of light, and he accused Mayor Anne Hidalgo of turning it into a public dump.  READ MORE

COMMENT:  My wife and I visited Paris last summer for 4 days and 4 nights and while we enjoyed being tourists and seeing all the sights that everyone has read about, we decided that we would never visit Paris again because of:

• the unfriendly rude people
• the poor street directions and signage
• the dirty streets

And, while it may not have bothered the seasoned traveler, I found the Paris Airport and its facilities to be a pain in the ass to find one's way around.  Very few employees at the airport spoke English  nor were they helpful with their directions.  This airport was HUGE and there was a lot of WASTED SPACE.