Four Days in Paris
Paris is one of the most beautiful cities I have even seen. I don't know what took me so long to get there. I ended up taking a bus trip with a tour group from the American Embassy and had a fantastic time.
Paris is not only the capital of France but is also, in a way, the capital of the Western world. The urban splendor of Paris and its famous landmarks - the Seine and Notre-Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, the lacelike Eiffel Tower - are unbelieveable. The Latin Quarter near the Sorbonne is a great (and reasonable) place to wander and choose whatever your heart desires to eat among the hundreds of restaurants; Greek, Japanese, Indian, Swiss and Italia were just a few of the restaurants we walked by. And of course the museums are out-of-this-world. The Louvre (well, the Renaissance section - it is too large to see everything in one or two days), the Museum D'Orsay, and L'Orangerie were the ones I had time to see this time. Since I am a big Impressionist fan, Museum D'Orsay and L'Orangerie were my chosen museums. L'Orangerie's collection of Renoirs and Monet's Waterlilies (I never realized how huge they are!) shouldn't be missed!
I definitely plan on coming back again and again... As Frommer's say: "On a first, second, even third visit to Paris, you will get the merest taste of everything that you could want to see in this astoundingly rich city. Don't try to see it all. Remember, it's better to see just a few things well than to run from museum to monument to park without stopping to reflect." The bus really helped us see as much as anyone could see, but I feel I only got a brief overview. Notre-Dame, the Latin Quarter, the Louvre, the Seine, the Eiffel tour, the Arc de Triomph, Champs-Elysées, place de la Concorde, Montmartre and Sacré-Coeur...and the emotional highlight for me, the tunnel where Lady Diana died. I cried like a baby there, and it really surprised me. But then again I was there a year after she died.
We saw and did so much. We had a boat trip on the Seine on the second evening we were there. The view at night is wonderful. The Eiffel tower glows, and the spotlights give the buildings on the bank an extra highlight. I also got to meet a lot of new people who were very nice - and got to meet some people for whom I had translated their medical documents. The American community in Bonn was really small, but it was great for my ego ("oh, you did such a fantastic job on my translation!").
All in all, it was a great weekend. I feel like I saw everything that I absolutely wanted to see, and I will be able to relax and enjoy it a lot more the next time.