Paris
When I set up this trip I kind of threw in Paris as an afterthought, thinking that I would pass through for a few days on my way home. After having spent the last two days here I can say for 100% certain that I’ll be back here some day. This might be the most beautiful city I’ve ever visited.
It didn’t start out very well though. I had a lot of anxiety over the language issue. I don’t speak a lick of French, and everyone I’ve talked to (even the Italians that I’d just met last Saturday!) said the French were a pain in ass about the language. They really want you to speak French, to the point that they pretend they don’t know English just to make you uncomfortable. This is part of the reason why I had avoided coming here sooner. I mean, how ungrateful could you be when so many people are adding to your economy! Then I realized that it’s not a whole lot different than having a bunch of immigrants picking your food and cleaning your homes, and then blaming them for your lousy economy, and I came around.
Still, I was nervous. On Tuesday morning I procrastinated in my room as long as I could, then headed out. After a frustrating experience ordering lunch - a great fresh fruit salad, where the waiter wouldn’t speak to me in English until I was done with my meal - I was feeling pretty dejected. Still, I had two days here so I had to make the best of it.
A couple of blocks from my hotel I walked into a huge park that turned out to be the Luxembourg Gardens and everything turned around. How could you not feel good in a place like this?
I walked through the gardens and headed toward the area of the Louvre and d’Orsay museums. I wasn’t going to go into the museums on Tuesday though - the forecast was for rain on Wednesday and Thursday, so I decided to delay the indoor activities until then. As I was leaving the grounds of the Louvre a beggar came up to me and asked “Do you speak English?”, and then showed me a card saying she was a Bosniak (yes, Joe Biden was right - suck it!), her brother had leukemia and her mother was dead. I don’t know if it was all true but I had to give her some money just for the creativity even if it was a lie. About ten minutes later another beggar came up to me and asked if I spoke English, and when I was at Arc de Triomphe an American came up and asked me if I spoke English. What is wrong with you people? Why do you think I’m American? I’M WEARING PANTS IN NINETY DEGREE HEAT, CAN’T YOU TELL I’M A LOCAL?!
I also took this picture as I was walking through the gardens leading away from the Louvre.
Here you can clearly see the Champs-Elysees leading to the Arc de Triomphe, as well as the Eiffel Tower, all of which I would walk to on this day. If you’ve ever been to Vegas and said “Let’s just walk to the next hotel, it’s the next one down” you know where this is going. These sights are WAY farther away than they seem due to their size.
So I headed toward the Arc de Triomphe, but I didn’t get very far before I had to stop again. At one point I was at an intersection and just stopped in my tracks. One one side was this (the "Petite Palace"),
on the other the Grand Palace, and straight ahead was this (Les Invalides)
This is an extreme example, but there’s stuff like this all over the place. It seems like every time you walk a block you see some amazing sight. By the time I got to the park by the Louvre I just gave up putting my camera away. I ended up taking 265 pictures on Tuesday, by far the most of any day on the trip.
So I get back on track and head toward the arch, and after a loooong walk and a couple of breaks due to the weight of my camera gear (never again will I bring this much stuff) I got there. And once you’re there you have to go to the top! It’s a lot of steps, but I eventually got there and the view was worth it.
Under the arch is a memorial to the unknown soldier.
Next stop: Eiffel Tower
I finally figured out how to get to the right road leading to the Eiffel Tower and made my way there. I had a map, but the roads are pretty confusing so I wasn’t sure if I was in exactly the place I wanted to be. Then I turned a corner and I was there...
I knew it was big, but until you see it in person you have no idea. It’s just massive, both in the area it takes up and its height. I was going to pass on going to the top because the line was so long, but I eventually decided that it was worth it. The line was two and a half hours long, which while not great turned out to be a blessing in disguise because by the time I got to the top (it takes three elevators, and the last one could be pretty scary if you’re claustrophobic or afraid of heights). At the very top there’s a small apartment that Eiffel lived in.
I don’t know if he was there full time though because it was pretty small; the mannequin you see at the back is against the back wall. The apartment is set up to recreate the moment when Thomas Edison (on the right) was up there showing off his latest invention, the phonograph.
The top floor is pretty small, so I went down to the second where the better views are and took advantage of the light to get some decent shots of the city. This one faces toward where I took the picture above (just to the right of the purple lights):
By the time I got to the bottom it was dark enough that they’d turned on the lights on the tower.
By now it was late - 10:50pm - but I had one last thing to do before calling it a night. At the top of every hour the do a little light show on the tower, so I walked to a nice dark area, sat down and waited. The park was packed full of people. There had to have been around a thousand people there, most in groups of 10 or so, picnicking at 11:00 at night! Mea culpa, Rick Steves. You were right about that part.
After the show I packed everything up and hunted down a taxi. I was really far from my hotel, and by that time I had easily walked 10-15 miles and spent over ten hours on my feet so there was no way I was going to walk back.
Still, after I got back to the hotel I didn’t go to sleep for a couple of hours. I think I was so jazzed by what I’d experienced that day that I wasn’t tired.
Today (Wednesday) was spent in the Louvre and the d’Orsay museums. The Louvre is the first museum I’ve ever been to where I’ve thought “I’ve got to come back here”, and the d’Orsay is where the Impressionists are, so it was a great day. I walked back to the hotel, and just as I got to the front door it started raining. Even the weather cooperated.
Paris is an incredible city, and there’s no way you can experience it all in a couple of days or maybe even a week. In Rome you have to kind imagine how things used to be, but in Paris everything is still there and working so you can actually experience it first hand.
If there’s any way you can come here, you should. It’s worth it.
Tomorrow it's a walk around the Notre Dame area, weather permitting (thunderstorms right now). I won't have time to post pictures because I fly out of Paris tomorrow afternoon as I start my trip home, so you probably won't hear from me again until I'm back state side.
Salut!
