Video for people who plan to visit Paris for the first time

[LouisXIV]

I have had the good fortune to visit Paris six times. I am from a beautiful small city, Traverse City, in northern Michigan. I am not saying we don't have our problems, but we sure don't have the problems in as large a scale as some of the popular larger cities of the world, like Paris, Rome, London, New York, etc. This can prepare people for what to expect. Most of these have been tried on me on my trips to Paris, all unsuccessful. I was lucky.

parisjourney.com/17-paris-scams-gypsies-and-thieves-revealed

[Deleted]

Interesting, but the more interesting thing would be to compare all of the major world cities and see which problems they have that are identical and which ones are their personal regional invention. A lot of these scams go back to Roman times (and/or Chinese imperial times), but since "there's one born every minute" a lot of people think that these annoyances were invented just to spoil their 21st century holidays.

I suspect that Tokyo might win as the major city with the fewest scams.

[questa]

Australia has a gold coloured $2 coin about the size of a finger diameter. In Bali the men pierce one and beat it out to make a ring...rather a nice looking artefact the kids like. They will come up and ask," You Ozzie? May I have $2 for ring?" Usually the tourist gives them one, but when there are a bunch of kids, enough is enough, and the tourists have started saying No, they have not got any coins.

However I saw 2 sweet girls about 8 years old with the perfect scam. One girl comes up to you very upset. She has a coin but her mother is sick and needs medicine. Please could she change her coin for Indonesian money to buy some. Direct change would be about 16,000 Rupiah, so you round it up to Rp20,000, the note most used. She thanks you and runs off. Immediately her accomplice appears on the scene..."You got $2 for ring please, Mister?"
And there you are with the coin still in your hand....!

[lagatta]

What I'm interested in is Traverse City! They actually grow wine grapes there, considerably north of the Niagara or Pelée regions of Ontario.

I've seen these scams in Italy too, and other places. They are very old; Boccaccio certainly wrote about them. The crooked card and other games are a mainstay at Marché de St-Ouen, but usually nothing happens if one simply walks past them quickly.

[LouisXIV]

lagatta, sorry for being remiss and not making a earlier comment on the Traverse City wine business Yes, it may seem a little north for wine, but we are lucky to be on the shores of Lake Michigan and Grand Traverse Bay. This location is great for grapes and many fruits and Traverse City is known as the Cherry Capital. The biggest reason for this is Lake Michigan is huge and rarely freezes in the winter and being surrounded by water that is not frozen in the winter keeps the Traverse City area warmer than most places in the state in the winter. Frequently I see TC the warmest place in the state on the winter weather forecasts. The other thing that really helps with fruit growing is that most of the orchards and vineyards are on hills over looking the Lake and Grand Traverse Bay. The result is that in the spring when there is a frost danger, with the orchards and vineyards on the hills, the natural flow of the cold air and freeze potential is to go down the hills toward the Bay. This is called air drain, it helps, but there are some years we do get bad frost damage. We are a very unique area for this.

One other think about Lake Michigan, our winds are normally from the west and on the other side of Lake Michigan in the winter in states like Wisconsin the temperatures are consistently below zero., but after the air moves over Lake Michigan, the air warns and really protects us from the bitter cold of winter. When Lake Michigan freezes over, like it did a couple years ago and that is rare, we will then get the bitter cold winter weather.

[lagatta]

How interesting!

That is very significant throughout the Great Lakes region, though in terms of Lake Erie, it means a huge dump of snow in Western New York, while the nearby Niagara Region in Ontario is protected by the Niagara Escarpment. I'm eating peaches from there right now.

Is Traverse City actually warmer than Detroit?

[LouisXIV]

In the winter I have seen Traverse City frequently warmer than Detroit and also the warmest place in the state. But in the summer we get the cooling effects of the lake that Detroit does not get. It is also interesting that the city of Pelston is frequently the coldest place in the state and it is about seventy-five miles north of Traverse City.

We also get a lot of lake effect snow in the winter because of the moist air coming over Lake Michigan from the west.