Paris is over-rated

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As an etudiante de francais, I looked forward to Paris a great deal. I went there with a fear of the French because, well, being an American I expect everyone to hate me abroad. The Parisiens we met were very nice to us, including the cab driver, the hotel workers and the waiters, possibly because we spoke French and are not your typical asshole, ethnocentric Americans, however crappy our accents may have been.

We thought we were lucky because we stayed in the first arrondissement and literally one block from the Louvre. I would much rather have stayed in the ninth, though it is the prostitute district and home to the Moulin Rouge, because it was much livelier than the first. (We had the Louvre. They had the Musee de l'Erotisme, a museum dedicated to centuries of erotic art, open till 3 a.m.) Our street and those surrounding were dead at night. Everything closed early. No bars were nearby. I think I got bed lice from our dirty hotel bed, even though I slept in a mummy travel sheet.

Our hotel, the Richelieu, was listed as a hostel but was not. It was a hotel cheap enough to be in the hostel price range. We were bored; there were no kids our age and it was quiet.

Highlights of Paris, for me, were the Centre Georges Pompidou museum and my hero Jim Morrison's grave at Pere Lachaise. I definitely recommend the Pompidou over the Louvre. It's wonderful. It's modern, youthful, and the building is truly unique. The exhibitions inside match the building in terms of creativity. Hundreds of young people chill outside the Pompidou on the pavement, playing guitars and watching street shows.

I was reading the Fountainhead while in Paris, which damns classical style architecture and exhaults modern skyscrapers. If you travel to Paris, you have to be very accepting of living in history. Or you have to be the kind of person that never questions general opinion, such as the Western assumption that Paris is the world's most beautiful city. Everything is so well-preserved and historic. While I appreciate classical-style architecture, I'm into modern, practical beauty, rather than exhausting energy to preserve the past's standard of beauty because I can't, by law, erect anything new that isn't a tribute to or preservation of history.

Disclaimer: Paris is a wonderful city and I appreciate it. The French are admirable in their pride for their beautiful city, their history and their art. I adore Paris for what it is and am glad that I went, but I do not wish to go back.

I love the Tour Eiffel and the Louvre's glass pyramid. They're great in the true sense of the word. These masterpieces, to me, symbolize Paris's greatness -- today. I think the Tour Eiffel is Paris's manhood in the symbolic sense of the word. It gives feminine Paris its masculinity.

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