Photos of Paris

It’s been a year since I went on my trip to France. I’m finally getting around to posting some of these. These are a few of my favorites from Paris. Here’s some interesting things I took away from our days in Paris.

1. The Eiffel Tower is enormous. It’s much larger than I thought. It’s huge! You really can’t get the sense of scale until you’re actually standing underneath it.

2. The Arc de Triomphe is huge! Same as the Eiffel Tower. You just can’t tell the stature of it until you’re standing next to it.

3. The best part of the trip was the bread. It was better then I remember it when I was in France 10 years ago. I’ve tried making the same bread here in the States, but even if you use the same recipe, the ingredients aren’t the same.

4. Paris is like a fine art museum on every corner. The art isn’t simply on a wall in some office/gallery – it’s on every street. It’s on every building. It’s everywhere you look. You go from one street to the next, and you’re taken back by the sheer amount of beauty and art in every direction.

5. Jet lag can be a good thing. We were wide awake at 5 am almost every morning there. Great for us, because it allowed me to snag some great photos of Paris before anyone else was there.

My favorite memory:

I was walking to get some early morning bread with my compadre Zach. We hiked it up a couple blocks to Paul‘s to get some delicious bread and croissants fresh from the oven. We paid for the newly acquired goodness and then I saw out of the corner of my eye a patisserie selling its treasures behind glass barriers. Money was no object (ok, 30 euros was the limit, but who’s counting). Zach and I looked at all the unbelievable tasty treats and pointed to each one that we wanted to try. The cashier placed all the patisseries in a paper box and off we went to find a place to sit down and eat our bountiful treasure trove of deliciousness.

I finally found the perfect place. I sat down on a bridge that connected the two sides of land over the Seine river. Right in the middle were some comfortable wood benches. It was early enough that Zach and I were the only ones there. There was still a little bit of fog over the river as we sat down. With patisseries in hand, we sat down and decided to go for it. Eating each patisserie as though it was our first time we could ever feel the taste buds on our tongues. Patisserie after Patisserie, pleasurable bite after pleasurable bite, it was a dream that came true that day. And if almost by magic, piercing through the fog we saw the tip of the Eiffel tower peak through and greet us. It was beautiful. It was the first time we had seen the tower during our trip. And there I was, in the middle of Paris, sitting above the Seine, holding the cultural food treasures in my hands and viewing the magnificence of Paris all around me. I was lucky to be alive. I was fortunate to be there that day. I was a witness to everything that is wonderful of Paris, and I was grateful.

Thank you, Paris, for your awe inspiring existence and unapologetic beauty.