Paris

Ah Paris, the smell hit us right as we left the train. This was our first of many encounters of being at a non English speaking country. As usual the food is our first priority when we have been traveling and for Paris our first stop was to get a baguette. The bread was tremendous it was so filling and had such a unique taste, very fresh. We then headed to our Host Laurent’s Flat in a nearby town Clichy. The flat was something we had never seen the entire place bathroom, kitchen, living room, and bedroom were the size of a master bedroom in the states. It was very comfortable and gave us a sense of the day to day lifestyle the French live.

We started our sightseeing at the worst traffic jam we had ever seen. The road around the Arc de Triomphe is circular and there are lane lines then to add to the mayhem there are 12 streets that shoot right into the circle, and with all this there are no stoplights. Everyone goes every direction whenever the want. On to the real spectacle the massive Arc, it was built in the earl 1800’s to honor the French killed in Napoleon’s campaigns.

When you think Paris you think of the Eiffel Tower. A tremendous structure that seemed to poke its tip out all over the city whenever you looked in its general direction. We walked around the city for many hours and every time we looked in its direction you could see some part of it poking out. It was originally built in 1889 as the temporary entrance to the World Fair. It was then supposed to be torn down after 20 years because the French were outraged by its ugliness but it single handedly is the most synonymous structure to a city in the world and gets the most paying visitors in the world per year.

Our next marvel was the Notre Dame Cathedral, its located on an island in the middle of the Seine River. We happened to be there on the day they were celebrating its 850^th year since being built. This cathedral was adorned with magnificent gothic gargoyles outside and massive stained glass walls inside. The most amazing thing to us was how long the structure has survived, it made it through the French Revolution, hosted the coronation of Napoleon, and even seen an English crowned king of France. It took two centuries to build it was started in the 12^th and finished in the 14^th, The entire Gothic Period.

Art history in college had nothing on being at the Louvre. All those paintings and famous works of art you see on your computer that look like they are 8.5 by 11 sheets of paper are astonishing 20 by 20 feet canvases covering entire walls. We saw countless things almost to many to name but the highlights for us were the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory of Samothrace, Consecration of Napoleon, and the Venus de Milo.

Of course we had to indulge in what France had to offer so we tried some wine, ate a crepe, and had some macaroons, very delicious now off to Madrid.