The City of Lights
I really wanted to like Paris. As a hopeless romantic, movies like Paris, je t`aime and Amelie had me expecting a quaint beautiful city that i would fall in love with immediately. Sadly, this was not the case. Due to an unfortunate string of events my impression of Paris has been marked, assumably for ever.
My first day in Paris was spent seeing the three big sites for which Paris is known. The first, the Eiffel Tower. It was neat but ultimately pretty boring and tacky. After the Eiffel Tower i walked over to the Arc de Triomphe. This structure (which apparently was originally built to commemorate Napolean`s victories but was stopped when he started losing battles (yay learning!)) is really awesome but unforunately placed in the middle of one of the biggest traffic circles in the world. It`s hard to appreciate a giant work of art when surrounded by scary French drivers. Once i was done admiring the mind-boggling amount of cars circling the Arc de Triomphe i crossed the Seine and went to the Notre Dame de Paris. This cathedral is breathtaking from the outside but an immediate disspointment on the inside. When i was in London i spent over two hours in Westminster Abbey exploring and admiring every little detail. Notre Dame de Paris, however was more sad then anything. Very obviously not taken care of, i would go as far as saying parts of it even looked dilapidated. Once i came across what (i´m hoping) was a month old Christmas display of a lifesize nativity scene complete with cotton batting, Christmas tree lights, and a projection screen i decided it was time to go.
My biggest problem with Paris itself is the general feeling that it`s just not taken care of. The metro is old and clunky with ugly stations that appear to not have been cleaned in decades. There is graffiti everywhere but none of it is any good; Paris is littered with Sharpie tags. Even Euro-Disneyland showed signs of wear and ill-care and for a Disney park, that is an insult of the highest order. Maybe this grittiness is what so many people before me find so romantic about Paris. Or maybe to really enjoy this city one needs to be able to spend hundreds of Euros a day.
To top off my less then bright stay in the City of Lights, while walking around the Louvre (which is crowded and overrated) my ear started bleeding. It was as if my body was so upset by this city that the only way it could think of to let me know was to cause me to go deaf in my left ear.
