Just 10 months before the opening of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, the French capital is battling an invasion of bedbugs.
The tiny pests were first reported in hotels and vacation rental apartments across the city during the summer. Then there were sightings in movie theaters and, in recent days, there have even been reports of bedbugs crawling around on seats in both national high-speed trains and the Paris Metro system.
One metro train driver was dismayed to find some of the unwelcome guests in his driver’s cabin.
It doesn’t matter where the bedbugs came from, they are everywhere. Paris is an international destination; this is entirely Paris’s failure to manage it a problem that comes inevitably with that status.