riontel | Illustrated Paris

I am sure Paris is beautiful even in the rain, the pictures seem to suggest so, but when you are huddling under an umbrella, trying to keep warm in your three sweaters, a jacket, a borrowed scarf, and hastily purchased for an exorbitant price gloves, Paris' charm can't help but fall a bit flat.

Ile de la Cité	Seine

Place de la Concorde	An American in Paris

However, once the sun comes out, two miserable days later, one starts to realize what all the hoopla is about.

Palais Royal

Fortunately, Paris offers a perfect escape from the rain and the cold: Musée du Louvre. Framing boringly-French Tuileries Gardens, Louvre can keep one occupied for considerably longer than one day. We got lucky, there was no line to get in, by all accounts an unusual occurrence, and the crowds were small enough that one was able to get up close with all the interesting artwork and artifacts. I was weighted down with my companions and wasn't able to see everything of interest to myself, but we did the mandatory part: Mona Lisa (no photography allowed), Nike of Samothrace, and Venus de Milo. I also dragged everybody to see Code of Hammurabi and in return endured a tour of endless collection of Egyptian plunder (what is it about kids and mummies?), which I personally am not that fond of but it produced a cute bonus for all the cat lovers out there :)

Tuileries Gardens	Louvre

Louvre from inside the Pyramid	Nike of Samothrace

Venus de Milo	Code of Hammurabi

One of the days we wondered up to Pantheon, well, the thing is so huge, you are bound to eventually end up near it just through the gravitational force, and went in. It was evening, and we were the last to make it through before the doors were closed for visitors. That presented us with nearly empty Pantheon, which makes it a lot more interesting than it really is. I can't imagine wondering through the crowd just to get a glimpse of some poor sods' tombs. Even if the said sods happen to be some of France's most celebrated citizens. Good news for those to come, there is still plenty of empty space ;-) Pantheon's most interesting feature, however, is not hidden away under a tombstone but practically jumps out at you. Well, gently swings is more like it, I guess.

Pantheon	Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and Emile Zola amiably share one crypt.

Anybody wants a spot next to Pierre and Marie Currie?	Foucault's pendulum

Another not-to-miss destination is certainly Our Lady of Paris, Notre Dame de Paris. After catching glimpses of its distinctive spire and towers from various vantage points around the town, we finally made it to the cathedral on Palm Sunday. The place was naturally swarming with worshipers and tourists. My companions got scared and stayed outside while I ventured in to be treated to a lovely choir performance, which I listened to, and to what I presume was a Mass, delivered in French and therefore doubly ignored. Being my timid self I pushed my way through the crowd all the way to the front, enjoying the atmosphere of an active church, which appeal to me a lot more than the ones converted into museums. We came back the next day to have a better look inside but unfortunately still didn't get a chance to go all the way up.

Montmartre used to be a quaint neighborhood, meeting place of artists and intellectuals. Some might still be hiding in its narrow winding streets but if so they are completely overwhelmed by the mass of tourists passing through and don't show themselves, except in snippets of their more modern 'art' decorating the walls of the buildings. Byzantine-style Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, prettily perched on top of the hill, stands out (and up) among the predominantly Gothic Paris churches and usually affords a great view of the city. But not when the city is as demurely covered by fog as we found it.

You can't come to Paris for the first time and not visit the Eiffel Tower. So on Monday we dutifully made our way to Tour Eiffel. To make the visit more interesting we took a boat from Notre Dame and enjoyed the views of the bridges, quay, and the banks of Seine, lined in places with inhabited barges. The vicinity of the tower was expectedly crowded, the line to the elevator to rise all the way to the top at least an hour long. Well, life of a tourist is wrought with lines, we braced ourselves and got into it. Not ten minutes later some inconsiderate individual decided that a jump off the Eiffel Tower would put a nice exclamation point to his life and fell on top of some people in line ahead of us. Lots of screams, cop whistles and ambulance sirens later we cleared out of the area. The Tower was actually still open, they only closed that one side where the person jumped, and I would have had no qualms about going up, but my little niece got all panicky and refused to stay. Young these days - no morbid curiosity whatsoever. Of course, at her age I used to pass out at the site of blood, so maybe I've got no business to criticize. On the other hand, we didn't have Hollywood toiling away at inuring us to the site of blood and gore.

The rest of the Paris trip included:
A visit to Centre Pompidou, an ugly construction which I found most boring and whose only redeeming quality for me was its role as a shelter from the rain the day we landed in Paris.
Musée de Cluny, museum of medieval art. An interesting place and quite worth a visit.
Musée d'Orsay, which I absolutely loved. Its collection of Impressionist art was well worth the hour an a half of standing in line outside in bitterly cold wind. The Art Nouveau was also not bad, if you like that sort of thing.
Mandatory visit to Arc de Triomphe and a stroll from it to Place de la Concorde up the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, with chocolate ice cream in hand.
Getting lost five minutes away from my hotel and having three French guys trying to explain to me how to get to the destination with no common language between us.
Great food.
And lots of wondering around the streets marveling at the fact that I am in Paris.