Paris was our first international trip about 33 years ago – and in hindsight we made a really good choice for a first trip as Paris is truly one of the great places to visit in the world. I had a business trip to London which clashed with our anniversary so we just decided to meet in Paris for the long weekend after our anniversary. We intended on a slower more leisurely visit and really only booked three things – Musee d’orsay, a Seine River Cruise, and an Eiffel Tower visit. Notre Dame and the Louvre were already sold out when we decided to go to Paris and we didn’t want to spend a lot of time travelling outside of the city – so the rest of the trip was pretty much unplanned and it worked out well.
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Sharon arrived ahead of me in the AirBNB and familiarized herself with our location near Notre Dame right on the Seine. It was a great location but was pretty spartan – basically a large room with two mattresses on the floor with a small kitchenette and bathroom. Nor was there any air conditioning on the hottest day in France this year (high 90s) but it worked out fine. After we determined that we were on the Left Bank (south of the Seine), our first stop was to get me a shirt – my only clean clothes either were work clothes or had English language logos and I wanted to avoid any unnecessary attraction. We then walked to the Parthenon and other sights south of the Seine. The Parthenon was originally built as a church but turned into a civil mausoleum after the French Revolution but turned into a civil mausoleum for the heros of France. It was located next to another very impressive building – the Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. A short distance away was the Sorbonne and Luxembourg Gardens where we had a quick rest.
Left Bank Walk
Annelise provided some recommendations as she had gone to Paris last year – one of her main recommendations was a restaurant called “Le Procope” established in 1792. We walked in about 5pm and were able to get reservations for that night. Famous for having frequent guests like Voltaire, napoleon, Thomas Jefferson – and now Jarrett and Sharon. The meal was good (and reasonably priced) and they brought us an anniversary cake with a sparkler on top and announced our anniversary in English. Some fellow diners congratulated us in English while others sang “Happy Birthday” in French. We then went to the rooftop bar at the Moulin Rouge – all the shows were sold out.
Musee d’orsay and Effel Tower
The next day we had one of our booked activities Musee d’orsay, a spectacular building which was a re-purposed train station from the early 1900s and we spent a lot of the day there – the primary art exhibited was Impressionist and post-Impressionist – before doing our Siene Cruise at night.
By the time we got to Eiffel Tower day, it was cloudy and cold (high 50s in the morning) – we did the express tour which bypassed a lot of the queues and learned some interesting tidbits and finished the day off at Montmartre and Sacré-Cœur. This is the area of town for which you receive most of the warnings about pickpockets and scams – we didn’t see any.
Notre Dame
Finished our trip with a quick non-booked entry into Notre Dame at 8am (no line) and then had a long walk through the main axis of the city – retracing much of what Sharon had done before I was there. When we walked through the Lourve, it was mayhem with people in timed ticket lines several hours after the published time. We saw later that the Lourve never opened on that day – employees were fed up and stayed away.
Great trip – rumors of Paris being a “no go zone” or dangerous are much overblown or the effort from the Olympics to clean the city up have worked longer term.
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