The next stop on my tour was a classic “must,” with Paris being a destination I wanted to spend several days in before flying home. Paris is an enormous city, and I was very fortunate to be able to stay with some friends while I was there in a fantastic location in the heart of the city. I got some tips on what I should do and in what order I should do them, but I hardly spent any time staying still. I wanted to see the city.

The city is very beautiful, and there is an immense number of small restaurants with sidewalk seating, with nearly all of them carrying the same “fancy” French style and cooking. Paris is known for its cuisine, and it definitely shows as you walk through the city, with so many places offering limited menus for the house specialty. I have to admit that the French have the most… “unique” cuisine of the places I’ve visited, with snails, rabbit, liver, and raw beef all routine parts of every menu. I really had to be careful tip-toeing around the menus to be sure I ordered something I could eat. And even when I ordered something well done, it still came immensely pink in the center. Those with sensitive stomachs would probably have the most difficult time in Paris, or would spend a lot of time drinking the wine!

The amazing thing to me about Paris compared to other major cities in Europe was the almost complete lack of English anywhere you went. The French are extremely proud of their language, more so than most, and they are extremely protective of it as well. There is a French law banning any sign or menu to be print solely in English with a stiff fine carried as a penalty. Everything must be documented in French, and while it is permissible to have an accompanying bi-lingual translation, very few places offer this. It was fortunate I took a few years of French in high school, so I was a little more capable of recognizing certain things on the menu or some signs; but for the most part I was truly lost, and it felt wrong to ask someone for help.

The French are among some of the snootiest people in the world, and I literally found this fact out with people giving me looks of exasperation every time I would ask for some help, and I later learned that this was because I spoke English. Some local people told me that for the longest time, the French waiters and shopkeepers behaved even worse, until so many tourists reported poor experiences visiting Paris that the local Chamber of Commerce sent out notices pleading for an improvement. Since then, there has been an improvement, but I could still certainly feel their stiff wind during my stay there.

Stiff wind or no, I spent an enormous time walking the big city seeing as much of the sights as possible, including spending an extended amount of time inside the Louvre. When I visited the Eiffel tower for the first time I actually thought to myself that I had seen this before; and I realized that I had! I had seen scale models of the Eiffel in both Kings Island, an amusement park in Ohio and in Las Vegas at the Paris Hotel. It pretty much looked precisely the same, except the real thing was much bigger! There was a line approximately an hour long to go up the tower, and there were three decks with the third deck being the highest, and obviously the most popular deck (of course I was going to go up there!). Halfway through standing in line after 30-minutes, a sign came up closing the third deck for the remainder of the evening for whatever reason! I was terribly disappointed and faced with a decision; see the second deck, or leave the line and return tomorrow and go all the way up. I absolutely couldn’t come all this way and not get to the top, so I hopped out of line and left to return bright and early. The next morning, I showed up at 8:30 am, and even though the tower opened at 9, there was already a line forming that I got in. As soon as the line opened at 9, I quickly got in but an enormous crowd had formed alongside the tower for what was surely to be a 3-hour wait for some. I was glad I had arrived so early! The view from the top of the Eiffel tower was stunning, and offered a 360-degree perspective of the city.

Paris is absolutely a beautiful city, and it is definitely a romantic place to take somebody. Parisians love their city and are extremely proud of the culture they have within their city and it is obvious. Every summer, the city dumps sand along the banks of the Seine River, so the locals who cannot afford to go away can relax in the city. It was quite an interesting sight to see, especially in an area as dense as Paris!

Overwhelmed with art and history, and my trip winding down, I really took the time to relax and soak in the atmosphere while dining in Paris. And an interesting sight to see; a lot of Parisians go out for a Coke at night, nursing their drink as many of us would go out for a beer! It is not uncommon to see people sitting outside drinking a tall cold glass of coke out of a glass bottle; delicious!