No Escargots Died or Injured During Filming of Journal.

Europe » France » Île-de-France » Paris
September 9th 2006

Published: September 9th 2006

Edit Blog Post

Franco

Sacre Coeur or Sacred Heart Church.

Never took advantage of the opportunity to try one of Frances most famous Haute Cuisine, while there. Perhaps the reason is, while in High School, I worked as a yard boy in one of the gardens on the mountains of Honolulu, which was rain forest country. I picked up snails the size of ping pong balls by the buckets. It was not an appetizing experience, and the stench of what dead rotting snail flesh smells like is still unforgettable, many, many years after.

As our bus entered France from Switzerland, I noticed the change in scenery immediately. No longer was there, the dramatic mountains of Germany, Austria and Switzerland and colorful quaint country villages. France seemed relatively flat, yet green. The small towns were too similar, it seemed to me, like our own old small American towns, except with sprinkles of colorful Medieval structures or two thrown in.

We stopped overnight at a small uninteresting town but with a beautiful French name. I was starting to wonder if Paris was all hyped, as what I had already seen of France was quite unimpressive. By the following noon, we reach Paris and the excitement of city hit all of us

The Opera House (I think).

This may have been the back view,which wasn't as distinquishable as the Front.

on the bus. The buildings though all seemed to be of the same beige color, still seemed to have an unexplainable subtle beauty to them.

We lunched at the Moulin Rouge, but the meal and the interior of the restaurant was a bit disappointing. But I guess, we could at least say, we were there. After they let us off at a large square, which the guide said was close to many points of interests of Paris. Of course, I and the group I was with, picked The Eiffel Tower as the place to visit first. The rest of the group, was scheduled to leave the following day, so time was of an essence to them. I, however, extended my stay for an additional week, on my own.

The view from atop the Eiffel Tower, was very beautiful, of course. I couldn’t help but noticed what seemed like a modern city with lots of high rises at a distance. I later learned it was part of Paris, called La Defense, which I later made a point of visiting by subway, the following few days, after.

The following day, made it a point to visit Sacre Coeur, a

Hmm, Are You Sure We're Not in Rome?

The Pantheon, replica of the real Roman one. Yes, we're still in Paris.

beautiful marble like church, of a very different building style from most of Paris, in the Montmartre District, also a famous area, known for it’s many sidewalk artists. The church was even more beautiful than the photos I’ve seen of it, and the area around it, provided a beautiful view of the City also.

Montmartre, was just a short walk from the church. It was a large square surrounded by nice restaurants and shops, and numerous sidewalk artists, painting pictures of their clients. It was fun going from canvas to canvas viewing how skillful they were in capturing their clients essence. I was almost tempted also to be painted, when an artist said I had a beautiful smile. However, I had to remember, I was on a budget and with the age of photography, having a picture painted of you, while paying quite a sum of money while struggling hard to keep still, didn’t make quite a whole lot of sense to me. Call me unsentimental, if you will.

Anyway, the following days, got to visit many of the famous sites such as the Louve, Latin Quarters, Notre Dame, La Defense, Versailles, Luxembourg Gardens, etc., etc. which I