Paris: City of Love

We left Switzerland to go to Paris, France, and I would have to say that this was my favorite place so far. The city is absolutely huge and you could easily spend a month there and still have things left to do. We had about a day and a half of free time to experience the whole city by ourselves. But first we took a corporate visit to the OECD where I was an “official delegate” for the day.

After that, we went straight to the palace of Versailles in our corporate dress up. The gates were coated in gold and the history behind it reflected in every room. Each ceiling was totally covered with mural scenes and chandeliers were hanging about. Statues and sculptures were throughout the hallways with gold overlays on all the crown molding. We went into Marie Antoinette’s bedroom and saw the famous painting of Louis XIV hanging on the wall. Despite the beauty of the palace, it was difficult to really take in the history and elegance of the rooms since we were tossed into the middle of about 500 Chinese tourists rushing from room to room with their video cameras or iPads that they were holding up into the air while taking pictures. It looked funny to see someone videoing the entire palace with a big iPad screen above their head, but this wasn’t uncommon for the rest of Paris as well. I was also mistaken a few times for working at the palace since I was in my corporate dress up; they were very surprised that I didn’t know where the bathrooms were or what the name of that painting was.

Our day off in Paris was just amazing. Against our own temptations to sleep in, we woke up early to start our self-guided tour at 8 am. First stop was the Sacre Coeur, a huge, white and gorgeous church overlooking the entire city. Personally, I would consider this to be even more beautiful than the Notre Dame. After that, we took the metro to the Louvre, the art museum that holds the Mona Lisa. The entire museum holds so much art that if one was to look at each piece for 2 minutes, it would take them 6 weeks total to see everything. We decided to just go see Mona and some other major pieces from the 4 floors and three different wings of the Louvre. The Mona Lisa was only about a foot tall, and again, a large group of Asian tourists swarming around it. My favorite part was seeing different pieces of art that I always saw in my history book in elementary school as well as the Code of Hammurabi.

After the Louvre, we stopped for lunch and continued on to Notre Dame, a large church in the middle of the city. It was gorgeous inside with its stained glass windows and a choir singing on the stage. The architecture was amazing with its intricate designs and portrayals on the outside. We wandered around the city from there, making our way to the Arc de Triomphe. But, we had to stop at the local Paris Lamborghini dealership first. The Arc was in the middle of a giant traffic circle where you would have to be mad to go around. Our bus driver took us around it 10 or 12 times on the coach the first night we were here. That was quite a scary experience! But he loved it.

For the end of the night, we finally made our way to the Eiffel Tower just in time for the sunset. We climbed 600 steps to just the second level which is probably only a third of the way up. After that we took an elevator to the very top! We could see the entire city on all sides from the top and it was a long way to the bottom. Everyone looked like ants walking around and waiting in line. We could see the EuroCup fan park packed with people and we could hear the cheers from Portugal and Spain fans during the end shootout. After the sun went down, the city lit up and the tour boats were flashing as people took pictures of the tower when they went by.

I will most likely come back to Paris someday. It was an amazing place to be, but couldn’t be experienced to its fullest in the 3 nights we were there.  

Pictures here!