Week 594 · Paris, France · 33rd Anniversary
Paris,
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.
We intended on a slower, more leisurely visit and really only booked three things — Musée 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 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. Sharon arrived ahead of me and familiarised 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 were either work clothes or had English language logos and I wanted to avoid any unnecessary attention.
We walked to the Panthéon and other sights south of the Seine. The Panthéon was originally built as a church but turned into a civil mausoleum after the French Revolution for the heroes of France. 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.
Annelise provided some recommendations as she had been to Paris last year — one of her main recommendations was a restaurant called Le Procope, established in 1692. 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.
"Famous for having frequent guests like Voltaire, Napoleon, Thomas Jefferson — and now Jarrett and Sharon."
The next day we had one of our booked activities — Musée d'Orsay — a spectacular building which was a repurposed 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 Seine Cruise at night, we found that the west end of the island that Notre Dame is on is a great place to catch the sunset for free.
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. Finished the day 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.
33 years apart — same city, same trip. Paris was the first international trip in 1992, chosen on a whim when a business trip to London coincided with the anniversary. We made a good choice. The photo on the left is from 1992.
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 arrived. When we walked through the Louvre, it was mayhem with people in timed ticket lines several hours after the published opening time. We saw later that the Louvre never opened that day — employees were fed up and stayed away. We ran into a lot of young families with kids screaming — I was pretty annoyed until we came across a photo and remembered we were not too low-impact when we visited with the family in 2000.
Notre Dame was damaged by fire in April 2019 and reopened in December 2024 after a five-year restoration. The interior is much brighter than other churches due to the restoration and new LED lighting — the original medieval colours had been obscured by centuries of candle soot. Entry in the early morning before the crowds is highly recommended and, unlike every other major attraction in Paris in summer, requires no pre-booking.
Great trip — rumours of Paris being a "no go zone" or dangerous are much overblown, or the effort from the Olympics to clean the city up has worked longer term.