Paris Light City

Paris is a preferred European destination for many Americans. Paris being the main destination in France, is the gateway for most travellers coming by airplane. As a gateway city, Paris ends up with tons of visitors who spend time within that city unaccompanied. Not only is it a great tourist destination, it serves the function of being one of the main cities in France and Europe for industry. Many French companies have major offices in Paris. It is this mix of business and leisure that help make Paris a cosmopolitan city.

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Paris can be reached with no trouble from many cities around the USA. Most of the US carriers who serve Europe as well as Air France offer plentiful non-stop flights to the Paris area airports. From Houston, you have a choice of two flights, four if you count the code shared flights between Air France and Continental. (Continental and Air France each operate a single flight with flight numbers from both airlines.) LAX on the west coast as well as numerous east coast cities serve as US gateway cities. If you are in London, it is likely to hop on the “Chunnel” and take a high speed train between the two cities.

My Experiences

To my surprise, on my last visit I found the folks in Paris far friendlier than I bear in mind them from my visit 16 years ago. English seems to be spoken more now than when I was there last. It could have been the local holiday period bringing joy around the world, or just a change in way of thinking towards those pesky American tourists who pour money into their economy.

During our stay, I was incredibly happy to be treated so well by the desk agents in our hotel, and the wait staff at the restaurants we determined to visit. Our hotel was a little boutique hotel selected by my wife’s co-worker who was with her on the journey to Istanbul. She and her now partner visit Paris habitually, in fact she even has family there, so she chose the hotel for its pretty setting and the nearby park. Unneeded to stay the staff treated us very well, and spoke perfect English. The desk agent even made sure that when we headed back to the airport that she came out and spoke in French to the driver of our taxi to make sure he knew exactly where we were going.

We stayed and dined primarily in the Latin quarter. In this area, we found several small cafes that served up great French food. One sunset we went down a street full of relatives run restaurants where menus were displayed in the windows. As we looked at menus we were approached by the servers and owners all contribution to serve us a great meal, either from the menu or they will make up a meal of our choosing. My wife was pregnant so we did not drink any of the French wine while there. We did have some great food from the menu. (Unfortunately I ended up coming down with the flu by the end of the weekend, which made for a long flight home.)

During one of our full days spent in the city was filled up with a city tour. We found one of the open top, double decker buses used by tour companies. I believe we ended up on the red bus as it seems like there were yellow busses, from another tour company doing the same tour. The complete circuit takes about two hours if you do not hop off and back on. We decided that hopping off at a pair of the sites was value it. In fact, we chose our stops previous to the tour got going. That allowed us to plan out our day. (Weather was exceptionally cold and miserable so walking was not too much fun.)

We stopped at the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and close to a trade centre where toilet water shops were all over the place. If you have allergies those shops can be tough on your body. The sightsee guide on the Red bus was great. She explained the implication of what we saw as we drove surrounding the city. We cruised down several main streets. We cruised along the side of the waterway which has loads of attractive sites along its banks. The tour guide pointed out the numerous architectural styles we encountered on our tour. All around the Red Bus was a great way to use a day.