It’s a grand day for the French. Café and restaurant terraces reopened Wednesday after a six-month coronavirus shutdown deprived residents of the essence of French joie de vivre—sipping coffee and red wine with friends.
The French government is lifting restrictions incrementally to stave off a resurgence of COVID-19 and to give citizens back some of their world-famous lifestyle. As part of the plan’s first stage, France’s 7 p.m. nightly curfew was pushed back to 9 p.m. and museums, theaters, and cinemas reopened along with outdoor café terraces.
President Emmanuel Macron took a seat at a café terrace, chatting with customers. Prime Minister Jean Castex, who planned to attend a cinema later Wednesday, projected a mood of measured optimism.
“Let’s get used to try and live together,” Macron told reporters. “If we manage to get well organized collectively and continue vaccinating, have a common discipline as citizens, there’s no reason why we can’t continue moving forward.”
Customers sit at a café terrace in Lyon in central France, on May 19.
Photo by Laurent Cipriani/AP
Actor Emmanuelle Beart went to a movie theater opening in Paris where her latest film L’Etreinte (The Embrace) was showing. The appetite for seeing movies was such that many in Paris lined up at breakfast to see a movie instead of getting their morning croissant.
Moviegoer Michael Souhaite, who works in the industry, set his alarm clock to make sure he would make a 9 a.m. showing of Drunk.
“I really need to go to the movies,” he said. “I go to movies maybe twice a week, minimum. So for me, it was really, really, really important. . . . Today, it’s almost emotional to be here.”
France is not the first European country to start getting back a semblance of social and cultural life. Italy, Belgium, Hungary, and other nations already allow outdoor dining while drinking and eating indoors began Monday in Britain.
Eateries in France have been closed since the end of October, the longest time of any European country except Poland, where bars and restaurants reopened Saturday for outdoor service after being closed for seven months.
Still, the French government has put limits on how much fun can be had. Movie theaters can only seat 35 percent of capacity, while museums must restrict entries to allow space between visitors. Restaurants can fill only 50 percent of their outdoor seating and have no more than six people at a table.
Restaurants are limited to 50 percent of their outdoor seating capacity and no more than six people at a table.
Photo by Associated Press
Top figures in France’s restaurant industry were frustrated over the government’s perceived failure to protect their prized gastronomy from the worst. Yet many, like Michelin-starred chef Alain Ducasse, have chosen to hold their ire over the crippling six-month closures to imagine instead the future of buzzing dining areas and swilled bottles of wine.
“Has [the government] done enough? The answer is ‘No’. . . . [But] optimism is a decision. We have decided to be optimistic. French gastronomy will continue,” he said.
Starting on June 9, the French government plans to move the curfew back to 11 p.m. and to permit indoor dining. Also on that date, France will begin to welcome tourists from non-EU destinations provided they have some sort of coronavirus passport or health pass. The final phase of the three-stage reopening plan is scheduled for June 30, when the curfew will end and all other restrictions will be lifted, if pandemic conditions allow.
France has recorded more than 108,000 deaths due to COVID-19, among the highest tolls in Europe. But virus deaths, admissions to critical care units, and the coronavirus infection rate are now on the decline.
About 40 percent of France’s adult population has received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose—but that rate is still well behind Britain’s 70 percent and behind several other EU nations.
Tourists waited with excitement and palpable emotion as the cordon around the world’s most visited museum and home of the Mona Lisa, the Louvre, was finally lifted.
Visitors were eager to enter the Louvre in Paris when it reopened on May 19.
Photo by Thibault Camus/AP
“I am extremely moved. In fact, just as I entered the Louvre, really just in the gallery, I immediately started crying. Real tears of joy,” said Pauline Lacroix, a psychotherapist.
“It means a lot, you know. It means COVID-19 is starting to finish,” said another visitor, Walid Hneini.
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