So this is going to be a really short post. I was booking my flight for a small trip to a location which unfortunately didn’t have any non-stop options from Boston, so I took that opportunity to book myself a flight with a long layover in Paris. I didn’t even shoot an entire roll of film here as I was only in the city for about 6 hours and just got off an overnight flight which I got zero sleep on. Most of my time was spent visiting the typical tourist spots and getting lost looking for metro stations.
My flight into Paris arrived around 8 AM after leaving Boston around 7:30 PM. 8 AM Paris time is 2 AM Boston time. So I was wide awake the whole flight there, and arrived just in time to begin getting pretty tired.
The train I took into the city pretty much dropped me right in front of the Notre-Dame cathedral. Was cool to see I guess. I didn’t go inside.
I believe sunrise in Paris was around quarter to 9 when I was there, so it had just risen by the time I got into the city. It made for a nice walk along the Seine.
I then made my way down to the Louvre. I didn’t go in there either, but it was also cool to see.
After the Louvre I walked down to the Eiffel Tower. It was about what you would expect.
I think the Tokyo Tower is bigger.
Probably the most interesting part of my trip to Paris was around when I went. This wasn’t planned at all but there had been crazy protests around that time. I arrived on a Tuesday, and the weekend before that there had been some fairly destructive protests/riots along the main Champs-Elysees boulevard. The following weekend after I left they were even bigger, but I was able to witness some of the aftermath of the first weekend’s activities while I was here.
The Champs-Elysees is basically the high end fashion/shopping district in Paris. Newbury Street times 100. Walking all along this street and its side streets I noticed pretty quickly that every other store window was smashed. The first few windows I saw I hadn’t quite made the connection yet, and just thought to myself ‘looks like someone had a little too much fun while they were out drinking last weekend.’ It started to click after about the 4th consecutive smashed window.
I’m not sure why the rioters were so upset at these scooters in particular. Maybe they belonged to some high-ranking government officials. More likely they were just indiscriminately looking for things to destroy. From what I saw in the news, this got even worse a few days later with multiple cars getting torched around here as well.
I was too exhausted to really explore too much given my limited time here, but from what I saw it was a nice city. I could see myself coming back some day. But for now all my excitement was reserved for my final destination, which ended up being one of the most amazing cities I’ve ever been to, so stay tuned.