Twice now I have tried to visit Paris in just two and a half
days, and on both occasions I’ve found that it just hasn’t been enough time.
Paris demands at least three full days and four nights to really do it justice,
and I hope that I learned my lesson this time. That is not to say that I
haven’t had a wonderful time here, because I absolutely have, but on my next
visit I’ll definitely try to give it more time. As I prepared for my stay in
Paris I made a list of the different things I wanted to see and do, which I
knew would be ambitious and tiring but which I thought I could pull off, but as it turned out I only got to about half of the things I had wanted to. It was good in a way though, because it gives me
an excuse to come back once again to this wonderful city.
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| Paris - Pont Alexandre III |
It is hard to say what exactly it is about Paris that makes
it such a great place to visit. But for me, Paris and Rome are tied for the
honor of the best city in Europe. Paris just exudes this infectious energy, and
before long you feel like you belong here as much as the Parisians do. Rome
makes you feel the same way, and both cities do so better than any other I’ve
been to in Europe. In Paris I think there are several factors involved. One is
the Metro, which is like God’s gift to tourists in Paris. Paris has the best
metro system (Europeans universally refer to subways as “metro” after the
original, Paris’ own, which was originally called “Le Métropolitain” or “Metro”
for short) in Europe, with more than a dozen lines crisscrossing the city and
very frequent trains, making it quick and easy (and cheap) to get from anywhere
to anywhere else in the city. One you master the Metro you definitely feel like
a temporary Parisian rather than an ignorant visitor. Another factor involved
in the appeal of Paris is that it is like an urban garden, with trees and parks
and gardens just about everywhere. And not just parks and gardens, but some
sizable and truly beautiful ones at that, such as the Tuileries and Luxembourg
gardens, which are like urban oases and are important tourist destinations in
and of themselves. And finally, Paris just has a spirit, a certain… je ne sais quoi, to use a French term,
and you can’t help but feel it seep into you as you spend more time there.
Paris is a gigantic city, a truly global cultural capital, but unlike big
global cities like New York, Berlin, or Tokyo, in Paris life comes first and
work and business come second. That is not to say that people do not truly live
in other big cities, nor that people do not work and conduct important business
in Paris, but rather that in Paris, life is a priority, and you can absolutely
feel it when you visit.
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| Paris, an urban garden |
I say that I had two and a half days in Paris, but in
reality I had two days and part of an evening, thanks to the difficulty I had
getting in to Paris and then getting to the city center. Paris was where I had
elected to drop off my rental car, and I thought it would be fairly manageable
because I had arranged to drop the car off at one of Paris’ peripheral
airports, Orly, from which there was supposed to be fairly quick and easy
transportation to the city center. That plan began to seem less stellar as I
encountered heavy traffic even in the outskirts of Paris. By the time I got to
the outer ring road, traffic on the freeways was at a standstill. Driving in
traffic like that particularly sucks in Europe, and especially in Paris, where
drivers are ruthlessly assertive and downright selfish. So I got to Orly more
than an hour later than I had planned on, found the car rental return area, and
dropped off my car. That part was pretty easy and straightforward, but the fun
continued when I found that the shuttle that would have quickly and easily
gotten me to the Paris suburban rail system, and from there to the city center,
was closed for the week. Instead I had to take a bus, which hordes of other
arrivals were also angling for spots on. This being Europe, there was no formal
line for the bus, just a mob of people at the spot where the bus stopped all
pushing and elbowing for a spot on each arriving bus. I ended up getting a spot
on the second bus that I saw, and about 30 minutes later I was at an outlying
Paris Metro stop. 20 minutes after that, and about 2-3 hours after I first
entered Paris on the freeway, I arrived at my hotel. Lesson learned: never drop
off a rental car in Paris, even at an airport. If it ever comes up in the
future I’ll try to drop off the car at my last destination before Paris and
take the train from there. I used the few hours of daylight I had left on that
first evening in Paris to get situated and take care of some trip business. I
bought a carnet of Metro tickets (a pack of 10 tickets which you get at a nice
discount, ideal for tourists) and a 2-day Paris Museum Pass (entry to about 60
different sights in Paris, including just about all of the major ones, and the
privilege of being able to skip the lines, for €40). I got some dinner at a
grocery store, did some laundry, settled in to my hotel room and planned out my two remaining
days in Paris, and then went to bed.
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| I only carry enough clothes for 5-7 days, so laundry is an occasional chore |
My top sightseeing priority on this visit to Paris was
Versailles, because I had screwed up on my last trip and went to Versailles on
the wrong day when the palace interior was closed. I was going to be in Paris
on Monday evening and then all day on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I had read
that Tuesdays in Versailles were best avoided because Tuesday tends to be one
of the busiest days there, so I set aside all day on Wednesday as my Versailles
day. That left Tuesday for pretty much everything else, so I designed an ambitious
itinerary for the day. I also wanted to do some of the more fun, off-beat
things in Paris this time around, since last time I stuck to the more “major”
and “important” sights (like the Louvre, Orsay, Champs Elysees, etc). So I
started out on Tuesday at the Paris Sewer Tour, a self-guided trek through the
Paris sewer system. The tour, which has lots of clear and informative signs in English,
takes you through the sewers and explains how it all works and the history of
the Paris sewers, from the days before there were any sewers here to the
present day. It really was very fascinating and fun, aside from that it
definitely smelled very much like a sewer. After the sewer I visited the Rodin
Museum, dedicated to the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, who lived and worked in
Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I was
very much impressed by his work, which in my view kind of combined the artistic
style of Michelangelo and his humanist physical realism, with the French Impressionist
style which was popular in Rodin’s time. The result is sculpture which
simultaneously appears very strong and vibrant and lifelike, like Michelangelo’s,
but also at times rough-hewn and like moments of real time frozen in stone,
like in the Impressionist style. After the Rodin Museum I ventured out to the
Montmartre neighborhood on the north side of Paris. If you’ve ever seen the
French film Amélie, it was set and
filmed in Montmartre, and really represents the neighborhood pretty well. It
feels kind of like suburban Paris, a little quieter and more relaxed than other
quarters of the city, but also a little more appealingly ramshackle and working
class. Montmartre is up on a hill, and at the top of the hill is the Sacré Cœur
Basilica, a 19th century Byzantine-style (unusual for Paris) church
that reminded me very much of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. I accomplished all of that, along with stops for breakfast
and lunch, by 5 pm or so, at which point I had to hurry back to my hotel to get
ready and get a bite to eat for dinner before the day’s finale, an evening
bicycle tour I had booked that morning.
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| Paris sewer |
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| Rodin's Le Penseur ("The Thinker") |
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| Paris - Montmartre |
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| Paris - Montmartre, Sacré Cœur |
I’ll just say right now, the bicycle tour ended up being the
highlight of my time in Paris. I had read about it in my guidebook and also in
a brochure at the tourist information office, but even then I was a little
unclear on what exactly it would entail. All I really knew was that it would
involve riding bikes around Paris and then a boat ride down the Seine River at
the end. The tour was scheduled to meet at the south pillar of the Eiffel Tower
at 7:00 pm, although when I got there at about 6:45 there were already plenty
of people there being split up into groups. There must have been 60-80 people
total, but we were all divided up into more manageable 20-person groups with a
guide for each group. My guide ended up being a guy named Max, and I really
lucked out, because he was simply awesome. I learned that he was 22 years old, a
recent college graduate and lifelong Parisian. He spoke English fluently, about
as well as any American (although not without a strong accent), and had
traveled a bit in America (and, I would learn, had even been to Vancouver at
one point in his travels). Like good guides tend to be, he seemed genuinely
enthusiastic and interested in sharing his city with us, and also in making
sure that everyone had a good time. From the Eiffel Tower we made the short
walk to the tour company’s office, picked up our bikes, and then hit the
streets of Paris. We rode along Paris’ excellent bike lanes from the area of
the Eiffel Tower up to the Notre Dame Cathedral, around Île de la Cité and the Île
Saint-Louis (the two islands in the middle of the Seine River), down to the
area of the Louvre, over and back on a few of the bridges crossing the Seine,
and then wound up on the Right Bank (which is what Parisians call the city to
the north of the river) where we would leave our bikes behind for an hour long
cruise on the Seine. Max ably handled the pack of riders, all of whom
were new to riding in Paris and many of whom were novice riders at best, and
the ease with which we traversed the very busy city streets was impressive and
due entirely to his excellent leadership. I have rarely had so much fun in
Europe, zipping around and through busy traffic on a bike like that. The tour
was pretty light on actual information about the city, but really the whole
point and appeal of it was the opportunity to see the city in a different and
exciting way, and in that respect it absolutely delivered. Another reason why I
joined the tour was because it included a boat cruise on the Seine, which would
normally cost more than the entire cost of the bicycle tour. The cruise was fun, and made all the better by the perfectly warm and dry weather (Max actually
commented that the day had been the first really good day of spring in Paris
this year), and provided stellar opportunities for pictures of the City of
Light after dark. Also provided on the boat cruise was a supply of wine, a
surprisingly good red wine which the group enjoyed from plastic cups. Luckily
there wasn’t nearly enough for anyone to get smashed, otherwise I imagine the
final leg of the tour, where we had to briefly ride the bikes back from the
boat’s mooring point to the tour office, might have gone less smoothly. But it
went without incident, and we all made it safely and happily back to the tour
office. When we got back I checked the time and realized that it was after
midnight – I had been riding around Paris for about five hours, but the time
absolutely flew by. It was an experience that I absolutely recommend to any
able-bodied visitor to Paris.
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| Max instructing the bicycle tour group |
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| River boat cruise in Paris |
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| The Eiffel Tower from the river boat |
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| Our tour group gathering up at the Louvre |
I slept well and late that night, and the next day I visited
Versailles, the palace of the French monarchy from the 16
th century
up to the French Revolution. Pictures do not convey how massive, nor how grand
and lavish, Versailles is. It makes the chateaux I saw in the Loire look like
Barbie’s Dreamhouse. Beyond that, and sharing a few pictures with you, I don’t
know that there’s much of interest that I can say about it though. I will say
that I am very glad that I went back and saw the interior of the palace,
because it was at least as impressive as the exterior.
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| Versailles |
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| Versailles |
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| Versailles |
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| Versailles |
That’s about all I have to say about Paris for now. My
fingers feel like they’re about to fall off from typing, and this post is
getting lengthy, so I’m going to leave it here. I could say and write so much
more about Paris, but I don’t know that I could do it very succinctly without
more time than I have at my disposal. Right now I am in Bruges, Belgium, which
has been another great destination and which I am eager to tell you all about.
Tomorrow I’m leaving for Amsterdam, and then in just two short days I’ll be
flying back home. It feels like I’ve been away from home for so long, and yet I
feel like I could keep on going if time would allow it. I’ll be happy to be
back home, but I can already guarantee that I will be back.
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