By the time Jenny and I reached Paris, we were exhausted from the sleepless train ride and had become somewhat numb from the constant barrage of beautiful and incredible things we had seen. Consequently, we took fewer pictures and hurried through sites faster than if we had started our vacation in Paris. Even after an exhausting week visiting Germany, Switzerland, and eastern France, Paris resonated with freshness and vitality, and kept us in a state of unending awe.
While many sights in Paris close by 6:00, the Eiffel Tower stays open until midnight, making it an ideal spot to visit after you've been kicked out of the Louvre, Versailles, or your favorite restaurant. In the evening the lines were short, so after checking out its underside, Jenny and I quickly made it up the 276 meters to the third floor.
We found that the view from the top floor was breathtaking, although Paris actually looked better from the second floor. The skyline was more diverse when lower, and less of a homogenous blur. Like Washington D.C., Paris has a strict building code that limits the heights of its buildings. One or two skyscrapers got through by mistake, but nowhere does the city have the overwhelming crowded feeling that you get in other major cities like New York. The city is a gem.
We watched as night fell and the city lights flicker on, one by one. Then suddenly, the Eiffel Tower exploded with sparkles of light as thousands of light bulbs flashed in scintillating patterns. When we finally made it back to our hotel room, we collapsed, utterly exhausted from a full day of sightseeing.
Paris is a beautiful city to walk around.
Here is the Paris Opera House, for all you Phantom fans (or not). We only saw the lobby before we were hurried out, as a show was starting and no more tours were available for the evening.
At the time of the trip, we lived in the Washington D.C. area, and so as I walked through the Louvre, I couldn't help comparing to the Smithsonian. Roughly, the two are comparable in size. The Smithsonian includes many buildings and houses many types of collections, including science, history, and art. The Louvre is a single, enormous building that contains only art. Both contain many types of art from many cultures. While the Smithsonian's collections include artwork up to the present, the Louvre's collections are more focused and stop somewhere in the 1800's, before Impressionism. Of course, Paris has other museums to cover other subjects and time periods of art. While the Smithsonian and the nearby museums contain the best collections of art in the United States, by far the Louvre has superior art. I suppose that is the U.S. had a historical figure like Napoleon, who pillaged many other countries for their wealth and art, the museums in DC would be as good as the Louvre.
After seeing so many churches and cathedrals, especially those in Ulm, Freiburg, and Strasbourg, the Notre-Dame Cathedral of Paris seemed small and unfinished. Originally, the cathedral was designed with towers, but the money ran out before the project was finished.
The gargoyles at Notre Dame were the best we've seen, though, and the building itself was ornate and beautiful. I'm glad that we made the time to see it.
We returned by train and cab to the airport at Ramstein AFB to find that flights to Dover were canceled for the next two days. I had planned plenty of time to get back in case this happened. Although we were still in Europe, we were done vacationing, and spent our time relaxing and recuperating in the excellent base lodging before flying back home. On the day we flew back, the terminal was full of anxious travelers, and there wasn't nearly enough room on that free flight for everyone. Fortunately, as I'd started taking leave a couple of days prior to even leaving for Europe, we were high on the list and almost at the very front of the line. On the way home, we chatted with some of my med school classmates who had caught a hop like us, and gone to Czechoslovakia together. Little did we know then that Jenny and I would someday have a chance to return to Europe, this time to make it our home.
