Exploring Paris

This was my second weekend in Paris. Now, I am settled in Paris, I know the routes, I know how to search routes for any location. I am ok with food and weather. Language is not problem. People try their best to speak in English. At the same time I am trying my best to know more and more French words. My senior here company suggested some locations to see for week end. I decided to follow him. He suggested many places near Eiffel Tower.

On Saturday, I started my tour with visit to a very famous place i.e Assembly Nationale. The moment I saw this building and some statues in front of build all I could say "Wow". Frankly speaking I need all kind of good adjectives to describe Paris. Its so beautiful everywhere. Does anybody know meaning of word Paris, is it Beautiful? Assembly Nationale is Gorgeous building. It is in front of Siene river. From, the bank of Siene, if looked around, in any direction, its simply beautiful view. Siene was flowing silently, and looking deep and beautiful. I am going to use this word very much. Sorry but can't help. There are literally hundreds of excellent bridges, very well architecture. On both side of Siene, there are old structures, buildings, big clocks...everything is just perfect. I was walking, looking at these great structures, taking pictures. On the other side of river was a one big Palace or Castle. So I moved forward to that direction. In the mean time I observed that many Paris people were busy in Jogging. I have observed in Paris, at any hour of clock someone is jogging or doing exercise. Even right now many people here will be doing some exercise.

I crossed the bridge and reached on the other side of river. And to my surprise it was world famous Louvre Museum. There are many good statues all around; buildings are carved in European style. If we decide to see carefully, it would take at least 2 days just outside of Museum. It was big queue at Museum tickets. Monalisa was inside and I was outside. I decided to visit museum some other time to see world famous Monalisa. After watching great building of Louvre museum from outside I planned to visit a bridge just outside of Museum. It is called as Lover's bridge. Here on this bridge couples come and put a lock on the bars of bridge. This symbolizes their love is locked with their partner. I liked the concept. However, I heard from my French colleague, that government here has to give contract to remove these locks to maintain the structural safety of the bridge. But even after removing the locks many times they keep adding. This indicates that Paris is very famous romantic city. After all it is city of Romance. After watching these gorgeous places I returned to apartment.

Next day on Sunday, I went on walk in nearby area of my apartment. After looking around I found that there is very good and big road just behind my hotel. Needless to say views of even roads are very good. I just purchased some needful and come back to my place. After coming to my place I and my friend planned to move nearby area to Eiffel tower. We came to Eiffel tower by Metro. By now we are expert in traveling in the city. Now I don’t need to open map. I know which metro to catch and where to change train. So I arrived in just 25 min to Eiffel travel. Interestingly, some kind of Marathon event was going on near Eiffel. French people love running, jogging exercise. I saw people from all age groups. Some senior citizens were really fit. There was huge crowd. I first time in Paris saw so many people together. Well I see these many people on Indian roads every day.   So we easily found the road from the crowd walked towards Eiffel tower. Now we took some photo of beautiful tower from different angle. But today our attraction was not Eiffel but the Arc of Triomphe. It is just 2km from Eiffel. With the help of map and GPS we were able to find Arc easily. It is similar to India Gate. I took some photos of arc from some distance. Next I went inside the Arc. It is basically the monument in the memory of all the soldiers died in all kinds of war that were fought by France. I took some photos of all the matter carved on the walls. Mostly these are the name of important battle fields and names of some brave soldiers and generals. It is allowed to go on the top of Arc. To get the ticket we need to go first underground  of the arc. After buying ticket it is possible to walk to the terrace. The staircase is old spiral. But it looks very good. After climbing about 150 steps I reached to terrace. It was windy above. Good part was that it is possible to watch all the important monuments of Paris from here. On one side we can see Eiffel as usual; on other side it is possible to see Grand Palace, La Defence area and Sacre Coeur church on fourth side. Arc is a place where at least 10 roads come to single point. It looks like petals of flower from top. They have used very good imagination while building the road and this area. I also heard one story about the Arc. There is flame continuously burning below the Arc. I heard that a “Unknown” soldier is buried as representative symbol for all the soldiers. His identity is unknown to keep it fair. Nice way to keep fairness.

After roaming in this area for long time we came to apartment. I wanted to prepare for the week to come. I saw many things in Paris but it is still not even covered 50%. It is the perfect city for tourists. It has all the ingredient to be great tourists destination. There are lot of things to be done in this week and also weekend. So see you till then…