Empty Versailles

After months of closure, the Château de Versailles is once again open to public. Among the visitors, most of them are now French locals. Most of the tourists from other countries don’t have the possibility yet to come to France, making it an exceptional period for the French people to visit Versailles.

The touristic attraction is usually very crowded and packed with hundreds of thousands of visitors, with very long queues in front of the main entrance (usually more than 2 hours of queuing up before entering the main castle!) Now, you can be alone in the famous Hall of the Mirrors.

The city of Paris, too, is very calm. The Covid pandemic doesn’t stop the Parisians from leaving the French capital and spend their summer vacation elsewhere. Even though they cannot travel abroad, many of them, I believe, still decide to go on holiday in other French cities.

Since a few days, doctors and experts have been discussing in the news about a potential second-wave in France. It is true that since the lockdown was lifted in mid-May, the social distancing guidelines are less and less followed, and we are seeing the number of cases going up gradually again.

The virus doesn’t seem to be very sensitive to summer’s heat, and is still spreading wildly. Maybe we should accept this “new normal”, to continue our lives with the continual presence of Covid-19.