Paris At A Glance

During my trip to Ireland my grandma brought my sister and I on a trip to Paris. Probably one of the best things about Paris is that if you have the time, you can walk everywhere. We were on a tight schedule because we only had three days to see everything we wanted to see in France but we still did a lot of walking.
We went to the Arc de Triumph and my aunt, uncle and I climbed to the top. (A great thing about Paris, most museums and monuments are free for the under 18 visitors) The view from the top of the Arc de Triumph was probably my favorite part of Paris. All the biggest streets and avenues spread out from it. Afterwards, we headed to the Eiffel Tower and went window shopping on our way. We saw some weird storefronts and insane prices (like the Louis Vuitton suitcase that cost more than a car we saw in another window). It was getting dark so they had closed the very top of the Eiffel Tower by the time we got there but we were able to get the elevator to the second floor.

We also managed to fit a trip to Versailles (which is not in Paris) into our schedule. We listened to a French accordion player on the train on our way to the Palace where we took a tour of the gardens, which were seriously HUGE. Then we took a tour of the actual palace and saw the hall of mirrors, the kings apartments, the queens apartments and Napoleons apartments. That night I tried Escargot. I have to say, it wasn’t something I would eat again but it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting a snail to taste.

The next morning we went to the Louvre (I got in free againJ) and saw some unbelievable statues, mosaics and paintings. We also saw the Mona Lisa and she was… unremarkable. The museum is quite literally huge and pretty much half the population of tourists in Paris were squashed into one room. All this just for a relatively average painting (compared to other paintings in the Louvre) of a relatively average woman that is about the size of an average television. Needless to say she wasn’t worth braving the crowd of aggravated old women trying to complete their bucket lists, frenzied high school tour groups and families of sweaty American tourists.

When we left the Louvre we headed straight to Notre Dame Cathedral (a long walk in sandals) and bought Panini’s on the way , which took a while because The Panini makers were having a huge fight behind the counter in French (at least it sounded cool). Notre Dame Cathedral reminded me immediately of the hunchback, Quasimodo (no shock there). But it was a beautiful building and inside it was nice and cool (stark contrast to the dripping heat outside) so we gave ourselves a tour before we left.

My time in Paris was a whirlwind, but it is an incredible city that I would absolutely love to visit again. If I go to France again I will visit smaller cities and towns that are less influenced by the pressures of tourism so I can see what France is like to French people.