Paris

Paris, what a crazy city. I'm sure a lot of other people can describe it better than I can, so I won't even try. But it's an amazing place. I've seen it at ground level, walking around the length of the downtown, I've seen it from high above atop the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and Musee d'Orsay, and I've seen it on the back of a speeding motorcycle. Any way you look at it, there's a lot to see and even more to do in Paris.

In the nearly four days I was here, I did more than I planned but less than I wanted. I'll stick to just the highlights. Versailles, home of the Sun King, Louis XVI. Now that guy knew how to build a palace. Instead of the overwhelming elaborateness of outher places I've seen, Versailles does it just right. I very rarely use the word "magnificent" but it definitely applies here. The Eiffel Tower's pretty cool too. It's not that tall compared to other structures around the world, but it's entirely open, so you can see all the way down as you're climbing. At night it gets lit up and people lounge around in the grass in front of it.

Two of the museums I went to really stand out, the Musee d'Orsay and, of course, the Louvre. The d'Orsay looks like someone fused an opera hall with an aircraft hanger, but in a good way. This is the palce that changed my mind about impressionism. They had Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Renoir and everyone else of note from the 19th and early 20th centuries, some standouts from earlier, and thankfully nothing from later. In Paris, they divide the art chronologically. Modern art goes into the Pompidou, middle art into the d'Orsay, and early art into the Louvre. Which brings me to the big L. The main lobby underneath the glass pyramids is like a major train station with crowds of people wandering around and escalators and exits going every direction. But once you actually enter a wing though (besides around the Mona Lisa), it becomes more like a Zelda dungeon. Each room has a different theme with a unique layout of obstacles and walls, populated by a handful of other characters, and if you're trying to get somewhere you're in for a confusing journey, sometimes going up or down a level unexpectedly by nearly hidden stairs, finally coming upon your destination by a very circuitous route. Okay that's enough similies and run on sentencing. Seriously, the Louvre is great. It's so big and there's so much stuff that I could spend days there, although as opposed to the d'Orsay, it's more quantity than quality.

Paris food is really good and also really expensive. I don't usually eat meals that cost that much so I guess I can't really say that it's better than food elsewhere, but it was mighty tasty. Well I guess that's enough about Paris, now I travel for 14 hours across 2/3 of France and half of Spain to get to Madrid.