Strolling Around Paris

Ah, Paris. The city of lights, the city of love, the city of stopping to smell the roses, and by all means a great city to walk around instead of taking the metro.

Just from walking around the streets downtown, you can absorb the air of Parisian life. The architecture is one-of-a-kind - the buildings are enormous, but not tall, and can always be identified as uniquely Parisian. There is a ton of open space, whether it is on the many parks around the city, or even on the streets, which are uniformly wide and are not plagued by claustrophobia-inducing skyscrapers. The streets are lively but never crowded.

Even the Jardin des Tuilleries, a public garden that connects the Louvre to the Place de la Concorde, which leads straight down the Champs-Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe, is clearly popular but not crowded. For Parisians, who must deal with constant tourist invasion, it still seems like finding a relaxing place to have a picnic is ultimately not a great challenge.

As Parisians really enjoy relaxing, a popular thing to do on the weekends, in addition to having picnics, is to just chill out in a park.

Now these parks can be found basically everywhere downtown. It seems like in front of every attraction is a park. The Jardin des Tuilleries, in particular, is probably the largest, and you can see that they have really turned it into a local hotspot.

The best thing about walking instead of taking the metro is that we can notice much more. In addition to seeing the lovely architecture, we see some curiosities such as this road-side gas pump. I don't think I actually saw any other gas stations during our stay, but this was cute!

Across the Seine river from the Louvre are Les Invalides, which was originally used by none other than Napoleon to house and treat soldiers. Today, it is home to several museums, as well as Napoleon's tomb, which is in the large dome. Here we can see the south entrance, which already looks like a large building in itself but is only a small part of Les Invalides. It's a little harder to see the rest of the building, which extends behind this entrance.

Sadly, because we were pressed for time during our stay in Paris, and because the museum was only open for less than two more hours anyway, we didn't go in. It was at this point, though, that we needed to use the bathroom, which leads me to another point.

Parisians have a little bit of a reputation of being rude to tourists, but who can blame them, especially when many tourists are rude themselves? However, they can in fact be very polite and helpful if you show a little bit of respect. Trying to speak as much French as you can always helps, as does adding simple polite phrases like s'il vous plait to whatever you're saying. It's really not that hard to get help as long as you know not to be another one of those annoying, thankless tourists.

Anyway, in this case, I asked the lady at the museum's information desk if there was a bathroom nearby (in polite French, of course). She asked if we had tickets, which we did not. But by simply acting cute and polite in saying no, I think she felt sorry enough to let us use their restrooms anyway. Somehow, I don't think "another one of those annoying, thankless tourists" would have gotten the same treatment.

Well, as I said, we didn't go inside, but we got to see the building's beautiful exterior, as well as the gardens that lie both in front and behind the building!

The Seine River and the views from it are gorgeous. A relatively clean river I think is always helpful for a city, and Paris is no exception. Thanks to some great planning back when the modern Paris was designed, trees line both the streets and the riverside. Down below, there are walkways and boats, some of which are actually cafés.

On the riverside opposite the Louvre is the Musée d'Orsay, which looks like it used to be a train station. This museum houses a large collection of French art. Wish we had time to take a look inside...

Farther east is an island in the middle of the Seine that is home to the famous Notre Dame cathedral. As I was taking pictures of the river and some bridges leading to the island, it turns out that boats were passing by at the same time. Seems like everybody wants to be in my photos. What luck!

In addition to Notre Dame, the island is also home to some huge administrative buildings, since after all, Paris is the capital of France. On the island is also a church called Sainte Chapelle that is tucked into some huge office but is supposedly much more gorgeous inside than Notre Dame. We didn't arrive on the island until around 9PM, which we didn't even realize because it was sunny as day outside. But arriving that late meant that we couldn't expect any of the attractions to be open, and indeed we didn't get to go inside either of the churches. Still, I was able to get the obligatory picture of Notre Dame's façade.

Tomorrow, we'll finish up the review of my stay in Paris with a little bit of this year's grand opening of the "Paris beach," along with some beautiful views of and from La Tour Eiffel!