1) Trains are the only way to travel. Turn up to the station, get on the train as it pulls in, relax all the way through the Chunnel and across Northern France whilst a very camp Frenchman brings me the daily papers and refills my champagne glass endlessly, get off slap-bang in central Paris. None of the abject misery that now accompanies air travel.
2) Too much champagne on the journey over makes deciphering the Parisian Metro system difficult.
3) Paris is expensive. Not 'a bit pricey' or 'on par with other major cities' but proper, blow you away and make you feel poor expensive!!! The exchange rate with the EURO hasn't helped but near the centre, so within walking distance of the usual locations a bottle of wine with dinner was 40EUR ($56) and a large beer was 20EUR ($28).
Restaurant Jules Verne is a culinary high spot in a city known for them so a premium is to be expected, but a Croque Monsieur will always remain just a toasted ham sandwich with a cheese and dijon layer on top. There is no way it should cost 54EUR ($76) !!!
Now I now how American tourists feel when they try and go out in the West End of London... only this made London look positively good value.
Even travelling out to the student regions a few blocks from The Bastille didn't really help.
4) Even when viewed on a grey and rainy January day, Paris is still staggeringly beautiful.
5) The Mona Lisa is one of the most dissappointing paintings in the world.
6) The Venus De Milo is probably not even Venus.
7) The Eiffel Tower will be lovely when it's finished.
8) You must have a staggering lack of national irony to make a big deal out of L'Ecole Militaire, call a road 'The Avenue of the Grand Army', an area in the city 'The Defense' and to have an attraction called 'The Arch of Triumph' when you have a reputation for being on the recieving end of many of histories greatest spankings.
9) There is a monument to the "Glorious Liberation of Paris by the Heroes of The French Resistance". I was clearly off the day they taught that in history class.
10) The Louvre is really, really, really, really, really long.
11) The preservation of many of Paris' most famous architectural wonders is, in fact, due to a Nazi!
12) The inverted pyramid from the end of the Da Vince Code is actually in the centre of a shopping mall.
13) 'Le Grande Biblioteque Du Louvre' (Grand Library of the Louvre) is somewhat diminished when you get to the other end and discover that it is actually a branch of Virgin Books with a Starbucks next door.
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KingVoyeur
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Posts: 1601
Posted: 10 years 51 weeks ago
I went to Europe with a group the summer after I graduated high school, with Paris as the last stop. I had to wait for my dad to wire me money while everyone else went on a tour of the Louvre. I got to walk around Paris by myself while they got hurried through the Louvre. Apparently I had the better time.
We also got a gun waved in our faces on the Metro and had a group of guys that were driving by tell us they were going to beat us Americans up as we were walking back to the hotel. J'adore Paris!