Paris by Night

Or so it was called during my private 2 hour car tour of Paris. Generously I was invited for this ride around Paris by the family that I am staying with. As I am sure you know, Paris is a beautiful city. It was wonderful to see at night. First we drove around some of the smaller streets taking in the views. However, I must say the most beautiful parts of my tour were the very touristy parts. It was beautiful to drive down Champ-Elysees which was lined by a seemingly endless row of well lit trees. At the end I stared down to the iconic Arc d' Triumph. Then we made our way to the even more iconic and more touristy Eiffel Tower. It deserves all the popularity that it gets. At night it is completely lit up in a bright blue color. We were able to park the car and view the tower from an excellent elevated spot. Then I gladly took some super cliche pictures, which I must say came out quite well. It was a great tour and I learned a lot about the city... or at least I had the potential too...

The car ride was split between listening to some classic American oldies music and my hosts explaining my surroundings. Many times they would make a genuine effort to speak to me in English. Sometimes I understood; other times... we played our version of the $100,000 pyramid game show. It went something like this; they would say the word in French and Spanish, if I still did not understand, they would say other English words to lead me to the word they were trying to say.... For example they said the words "government" "house" "president of a city" .... did you figure it out? The answer was the Mayor's house. This was quite the accidental amusing game to play. Other times they would simply speak the names of places to me in French. Sometimes I somewhat understood, sometimes I just made a terrible attempt at repeating what they said, and yet others shamefully I just smiled and nodded.

Rainy days in Paris: I have also had a little time to walk around Paris during the last two days. But the weather and their limited amount of time made these trips short but sweet. Now that I have a vague idea of the layout of Paris and a decent understanding of the Metro system, I will begin to venture off myself. Maybe a day at the Louvre tomorrow...

Otherwise my spirits are very high and I have begun to think about what I am going to do for the Holiday season and beyond... but only some vague ideas. Of course I don't want to commit to anything yet!