Paris, the Beautifully Iconic City : Travel Blog #8

Paris: the epicenter of fashion. The city of love. The home of the French Resistance during Nazi occupation. The backdrop of the French revolution. The amount of history and architecture was amazing. We stayed for three nights in a tiny little apartment and did the five most iconic things to get a glimpse of this city that has been talked about and filmed in for centuries.

#1 The Eiffel Tower

I don't know about you, but when I think of Paris I'm basically just picturing the Eiffel Tower. We visited it at night as it was lit up and were able to ride all the way to the top! The views were breathtaking as we overlooked the city. In one of my favorite movies ever, Tuck Everlasting, Jesse tells Winnie that if they ever visit the Eiffel Tower, they would "...take their shoes off and walk barefoot up every single solitary step." He's trying to teach her to really live and experience life fully. That has stuck with me for years, so despite the strange looks I received, I took off my shoes and walked up one single solitary step of the Eiffel Tower to kind of fulfill Jesse's statement! (We took an elevator the rest of the way as it was unfortunately below freezing outside.) The Eiffel Tower was a memorable experience!

It was absolutely freezing!

View of Paris from 906 ft!

#2 The Palace of Versailles

I love royal history. When I was younger, my favorite books were the diaries of princesses like Anastasia Romanov, Elizabeth I, and of course Marie Antionette! Visiting Versailles was like fulfilling my childhood imagination. Here we visited the French monarch's summer palace. We toured the rooms of Marie Antionette, the famous Sun King, and Napoleon Bonaparte himself! We soaked in the French history as we walked miles and miles of the gorgeous grounds and surrounding buildings. We also visited the super popular Hall of Mirrors!

The Hall of Mirrors inside the main palace.

View of the gardens outside the Grand Trianon.

#3 The Louvre

Home to the Mona Lisa, Venus, and countless other stunning art pieces from all over the world, the Louvre far exceeded our expectations. It was breath-taking. We learned that this building was the old palace for the french monarchs most of the year. We wandered for about four hours until we were forced to leave because we had an appointment in the catacombs to get to, but we could have stayed for weeks upon weeks and still not seen it all! I found the statues to be most impressive, but from a real Egyptian mummy to Renaissance paintings to ancient African artifacts, the Louvre truly had everything!

Real mummy!

Easter Island statue.

Joan of Arc statue.

#4 Notre Dame

Being honest, we really didn't "visit" the Notre Dame. It is closed until 2024 because of the fire that it suffered. They are working on fixing the damage in time for the 2024 Olympics that Paris is hosting! But alas, we had to settle for taking a quick picture outside. It was quite fascinating to see this church that is talked about so much!

#5 The Catacombs

Underneath France lays an old limestone quarry that supplied materials for many buildings including the Notre Dame. It was forgotten until part of it collapsed and brought the buildings and streets above it down with it. Old Paris had another problem too, overpopulation of corpses. The Black Death led to an influx of mass graves that were emitting awful pollution as they decayed. Milk left on a doorstep near these cemeteries would sour in less than hour because of the disgusting air quality! Thus the French rulers found the seemingly perfect solution to dig up the bodies of both mass graves and private grave plots and throw them down a chute into the old quarry. There they arranged the bones of both poor commoners and aristocrats together into a artistic walls on a path. The people were outraged at the degration of their dead and mix of social classes, but it did ultimately work. Now in the catacombs, we walked through blocks and blocks of underground artsy walls made of the bones of over 6 million people. It was beautiful, but saddening too and sparked some very real conversation on ethics.

Every wall for miles looked something like this.

This skull had three perfectly placed bullet holes!

Overall Paris was unforgettable. We are told so much about Paris and see it in so many films that it seems overwhelmingly incredible when you arrive. However, it was an interesting experiment to also try to form our opinions of the city and its sights based off of what we actually viewed them as, not just how iconic they were. We were most impressed at the grandness of their palaces and architecture. The buildings are as ornately incredible as it gets! It was amazing to see this city that is saturated with fascinating history!