After a few days of struggling, culture shock, and learning to navigate big cities we finally had a magical day in Paris. Our first stop was the National Opera of Paris, also known as the Opera Garnier, the opera house that Phantom of the Opera was based on. I have 2 real loves in life, potatoes and musicals. Touring the Opera house was awe-inspiring. We saw the great chandelier, stood in the auditorium, and snuck into Box #5 where we hoped to run into the Phantom, alas we did not, but we did learn a great deal of history about the opera house and even of the Phantom myth itself which was truly enriching.
Starving, because we don’t understand how to feed ourselves, we stopped into a nearby Starbucks, which was the fanciest Starbucks I have ever seen. I’m talking fresco’s and gold painted moldings. It was stunning! One of the great parts of Europe is everything is centuries old and instead of rebuilding for modern establishments, they just squeeze into the old structures and adapt to what is there. This also causes some difficulties and peculiarities, but I’ll save that for another post.
From Starbucks we meandered the streets until we found the metro, rode one stop and emerged blinking into the blinding sun where standing tall in front of us was the arc de triumph. The arc was one of the few monuments whose immensity truly surprised me. The Arc sits in the middle of the Champs-Elysees which is the busiest street in Paris with the round-about being ten lanes wide. To get to the arc you have to go under the street and emerge in the middle. These directions aren’t clearly marked though so we walked around the entirety of arc before finally finding the entrance. I want you to understand how big this is; it took us at least ten minutes to walk around. When we finally got to the arc we decided to just hangout under the arc and really enjoy being in Paris for a minute, this was the first time we really got to just pause and take it in. The arc is a beautiful piece of architecture and is covered in massive sculptures. Here at the arc they also have France’s version of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier where they burn a perpetual flame which was very moving.
After an hour or so we decided to move on and visit the Notre Dame Cathedral. The Cathedral was one of the places I wish we could have spent more time at with less people and a guide. It wasn’t necessarily crowded but it is much smaller than it appears to be and there wasn’t a lot of room. I took a history class that spent a lot of time discussing gothic architecture so seeing the flying buttresses and the massive arches was fulfilling but we had to move on quickly as there were a lot of people trying to get through.
We had about 2 hours until our next activity so we decided to sit at the base of the Eiffel Tower and relax. As we sat taking selfies a French man walked up to us and (very politely) started hitting on us, which I find absolutely comical. He was very nice though and talked to us in his broken English about being a Parisian and about the U.S., surprisingly this was the only person we found who really wanted to talk. He was very interesting to say the least.
We then had to rush over to the base of the Eiffel tower where our boat tour was launching from and spent the next hour on the Seine at sunset, which was absolutely beautiful, and finally got to see the Eiffel lit up, the most magical part of our trip so far.
This trip has been rough at times but this day in Paris reminded me how lucky I am to be on this trip and reaffirmed my love for France and French culture.
À Bientôt,
Nicole