Right, I promised ‘country’ posts to accompany my tour of Europe. I’m not going to do a diary style thing dealing with what I did day to day — I still have a vague idea of writing all my travel notes up and making some sort of travelogue one day. But this is not that, these posts are more my quick-and-dirty reflections on the countries I’ve been to.
And so: Paris, “The City of Lights”. To be honest I’m wasn’t really here to do the tourist thing, it was more of a stop off to visit friends, and there should be plenty more tourism coming up.
I knocked off a few main sites anyway, the picture to the left is one of the rare ones with me in it to prove that I was really there. We didn’t go up the Eiffel Tower, instead we climbing the Arc De Triomphe so we could see the Paris skyline with the tower in it. You can get a pretty good idea of the layout of the city from the top, if you’ve not had a heart attack from the stairs. Sadly my pictures from the top aren’t that great, so you get one from across the road instead.
I also got a chance to go round Notre Dame which is probably more impressive from the outside, it’s not that the inside isn’t impressive but one gothic cathedral is much like another and when you’re part of a shuffling line of tourists it kinda loses something.
We didn’t eat particularly French stuff, in fact the best meal I had was in an excellent Sushi place, but I did make a point of getting a plate of snails. Just getting them out the shells is a bit of a challenge, even with the special tongs they give you. Once you get them out they’re kinda small, they have a texture not unlike a mussel and a taste I can only describe as earthy. Not bad, but not something I think I’d seek out again.
The problem with Paris is that it’s huge with a shedload of things to see and do, even if I hadn’t been spending a significant part of my trip knocking back Jagermeister I’d still not have seen a fraction of it. Paris is expensive too, a few more days could have easily broken my budget. Fortunately it’s only a short hop away so I can always go back and see more of it.
My advice for Paris is to plan ahead, now that’s true of anywhere but having a proper plan and a knowledge of where the attractions are relative to each other is going to help you get the best out of the place. As with anywhere the cheaper places are off the beaten track, but the sheer size of the place makes finding them difficult.
Would I go back? Yes, in fact I’ll almost certainly be back this year. There’s so much else I could do and it’s so easy to get to that there’s really no excuse for not returning.
But still, Eiffel Tower, Norte Dame, Arc de Triomphe, Snails? I think that means Paris counts as done, more pictures in the Flickr set.