Paris from the ground up
I was never one to Ooh and Ahh about Paris. In my mind, Paris was a beautifully jaded woman that was already the subject of excessive adoration and needed none of mine.
It wasn’t until our second day in France that I realized I was wrong. We were touring the city in our Citroen when we drove onto the grounds of Le Louvre and a sheath of preconception fell off like a curtain at the main exhibit of a gallery premier. I was immediately humbled.
It’s true that Paris is overrun with well over 30 million tourists each year who come home to fill eager ears with exaggerated recollections of one-of-a-kind gelato shops and cafés that are in actuality part of International chains. But the tearing of the perfectly painted canvas in my mind by my own tourist friends only increased my appreciation of the city. Paris, I realized, is not a young strikingly gorgeous woman vivacious in youth and shallow at heart. She is instead an old soul with a rich past working hard to keep up with modern demands.
As we put-putted through the streets past the Palais Garnier, I wondered how long it would take to recount the entire history of just one city block. If it were this one with the opera house, even the abridged version must take a full day. This solitary symbol of Parisien culture is beautiful, yes. But it is also the setting for the original novel Le Phantôm de l’Opéra on which Andrew Lloyed Webber’s musical is based (a score which elicits fond childhood memories for me), and was so elaborately designed that even the miniature model which we saw at Musée d’Orsay takes an extraordinarily long time to examine. The connection with the Phantom of the Opera is only one detail of its intricate past and the idea that there must be a million more boggled my mind.
Notre Dame
After sweeping across L’institut de France where the French dictionary is written and stopping to pose in front of the Notré Dame and the Eiffel Tower, we weaved through the insane uncontrolled traffic around La Place de la Concorde where over two dozen Asian brides and grooms lined up to take wedding photos. This was the Paris I had no interest in. I learned here from Valerie that only French nationals can legally be married in the country, so these couples were really only here to pose for photos in puffy white dresses and uniform black tuxedos with the obelisk in the background as a tourist landmark. Having just posed for my own tourist shots in front of the Notré Dame and Eiffel Tower, I understood the need for some proof of having been in Paris but I wondered whether they knew they were standing on the square where King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and other important figures of the French Revolution were publicly executed by guillotine; hardly romantic.
Following our tour, we stopped for lunch at one of the 24 restaurants and eateries at Galéries Lafayette. When I had first seen this on our itinerary I thought it was strange that of all the places in Paris, we were going to spend time touring and eating at a department store. Another presumption was shattered when I learned that Galéries Lafayette with its impressive glass dome ceiling and elaborate gold detailing in its archways and balconies was never meant to be anything other than a department store. I had assumed that all department stores must be like the ones I’d seen in North America and that if they weren’t it was only because the building was originally designed for something else. But there seems to be an unspoken rule in Paris that nothing is permitted to be merely functional. It must be beautiful or else be tossed into the fray.
Sculpture outside of Le Louvre. This is how I felt being there.
After lunch we had an afternoon to spend at leisure and I went almost immediately back to Le Louvre. I just stood there for a moment and felt like crying but the tears wouldn’t come. I was mentally berating myself for not having come to Paris sooner. I had waited two decades too long and I know I would have waited even longer if Transat Holidays hadn’t invited me on this trip. After only a brief morning sampling of all the things I had missed, realizing how many misrepresentations were housed in my mind all this time, and only beginning to see how much there was still left to learn, I was mortified at my complacency with my travels thus far. I spent the rest of the afternoon still in thought as I watched Paris move on to inspire more unsuspecting tourists.
A note to all my readers: Don’t wait to go to Paris, especially if you’ve felt a desire to go in the past. If you do, you might reprimand yourself for taking so long once you finally make your way there. Air Transat operates up to three weekly flights from Vancouver, two from Calgary, six from Toronto, and daily flights from Montréal to Paris during the summer months. No excuses.
Thank you to Valerie Martin and Tanya Saba from Transat Holidays for inviting me on this trip to Amsterdam & Paris, and to Mélanie Paul-Hus and Véronique Potelet Anty from the France Tourism Development Agency and Paris Tourism Office for putting together an incredible itinerary and showing me what I’ve been missing all this time.
