Have you ever wanted to fly through the wonders of France? The historical battlegrounds of World War 1, the neck-breaking, endless Eiffel tower, the majestic museums and a wave through the long rivers of paralleled beauty and create an image that extend the boundaries of imagination. This fantastic trip clenched onto all our excitements, and we waited for them to be shown.
Firstly, we descended towards south east of England by our car and arrived at the entrance of the English channel. The furiously fast trains of the Euro-tunnel elevated us to France, it was like A Utopian Passage. And there we were, in the north of France, Calais. Without a second to spare we zoomed off to Paris where the excitements were held.
As we were driving through the endless roads with flat surfaces, pleasantly peaceful views of pure greenery, we all got a little glimpse of the battleground of the battle of the Somme. I couldn’t really catch anything with my naked eye due to the surface being flat. Although, we could adore the sight of the beautiful plain, greenish-yellow and flat hillside.
We still had several hours of traveling before we arrived at our destination. Finally, we arrived at the heart of France, Paris after the exhausting 4 hour, 310 km journey. The roads were quite immense although it wasn’t an exception for how busy they are. Especially the roundabout of the Arc de Triomphe. It almost felt like the cars were gonna scrape each other, there were no road markings as well, so everyone was puzzled in deciding which direction to go in. We almost arrived at the parking destination, as we approached, some super-cars drove past us (A Ferrari Enzo and a Lamborghini Aventador). The roads were getting busier every second but more exciting too!
Places to visit – Arc de Triomphe
The Arc de Triomphe was built quite a while ago at around 1806, and it surprisingly still looks as good as new. However new it looked, the pathway to the top wasn’t that fun. It was quite a workout with 284 spiral steep steps to climb, and another thing to worry about was the grip. Every-time I stared down, my legs shivered as if it was freezing at the top. The total height of the monument is 50m. At the top you can get a unique capture for the view of 12 different avenues connected to the roundabout. Just like we looped around the stairs, we also took a loop around the inside of the monument with some interesting galleries. At the top was the sun’s rays at its best; with the rays almost blinding our vision we could catch sight of the Eiffel Tower.
Places to visit – Eiffel tower
Finally, Eiffel tower. Luckily, we booked to skip the line with Get Your Guide. The moment we entered, I tried to look up to see if I can even tilt my head to glance at the peak. My neck was facing in a 80 degree angle, which was really high. When you’re staring straight up at the peak of Eiffel tower it almost feels as if it will drop right on your head. This stunning piece of construction was built in the late 19th century (1887-89). The architecture was conducted by Gustave Eiffel who’s company designed and built the tower. The only disadvantage is the amount of people. They are innumerable, it felt like the worlds population was stuffed there. Other than that everything was just fabulous. The height of the Eiffel tower not including the antennae is 300m (6 times taller than Arc de Trioumphe) but including it makes it an enormous height of 324m.
One of the tour guiders of Get Your Guide led us to the lift, which are designed quite uniquely. The lift was a state-of-the-art engineering for the time. It was a diagonal lift which exceeded us to a height of 60m in a stunning fashion that entertained us slightly. You don’t need to panic though, it moves slowly. When we came to halt we arrived at the first stage. There was a glass surface where you could see down directly. The second stage kind of looked like a balcony. The guider just pointed towards some of the famous buildings including, Arc de Tiomphe, Champs Elysées, Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Louvre Museum. There was a really tall skyscraper ahead of us which was Paris’ approach to attracting and advertising for the 2024 Olympics. They have wanted to host the Olympics for a long time and gladly, they will host it in 2024. The next and last floor consisted of a panoramic view at an immense height of around 300m. The queue to take you to the top lasted for a long 1 hour, and with the bright sun beaming down at our heads, our bodies were filled with a lot of exhaust.
We finally came to the top. The whole deck was filled with people, you couldn’t even walk in the path, it was stuffed! But we could luckily still get some beautiful pictures which caught the essence of Paris. We descended by taking the lift from the top to the first floor. To get a different experience we traveled down the countless iron stairs. The whole tower had a prodigious 1710 steps! After we got down, we were gratified by the sight of the night-lights. It was a beautiful sight!
Things to do – Seine cruise tour
The River Seine is located right next to the Eiffel tower. The last cruise took off at 10:00 pm, which was the one we narrowly got to. The boat was shockingly massive, about 500 people would fit in it. The first scene we captured was obviously the bulging and bright Eiffel tower. It had light-house lights, spinning around at the peak of the Eiffel tower and gleaming yellow lights making it even more visible. As we sailed we could just about see the miniature version of the Statue of Liberty standing right next to the river which was an unexacting sight.
It felt like the path was endless with the countless houses that we encountered side by side. There were plenty of things to be seen, however near the end of the cruise tour we sailed opposite the majestically magnificent Louvre museum. It was immense and took us 3 minutes for getting from one end of the museum to other by the boat! However we returned back to the entrance. The long exhausting day led to us arriving our hotel at 1:00 am. It sure was tiring!
Places to visit – Louvre Museum
The Louvre museum is the largest but second most popular art museum in the world. In an enormous area of 72,735 square meters lies the museum of approximately 38,000 masterpieces containing works of art and over 380,000 objects. The Louvre was originally built in late 12th century but was re-constructed in the 16th century. All the paintings are extraordinarily beautiful that they wouldn’t even fit in the eyes of imagination.
Some of the main paintings including the Mona Lisa and Michelangelo’s Dying Slave was something that had to be seen. We first zoomed past everyone to see the wondrous beauty of the painting. Although we were stopped by the eye-catching surroundings. The bright and dazzling colours could only satisfy you by the eye. Ahead of us was a plain, tall and white wall. Behind it was a $800 million painting. We turned our back’s to see the half-smile of Lisa Gherardini. And there it was, along with a bunch of huddled people shoving each other to make look as if they are worshiping Mona Lisa like Jesus.
The painting was painted by the famous Leonardo Da Vince known for a wide range of talents. It approximately took Leonardo four prolonged years to finish the painting, and is now thought to be the most famous and optimal painting in the world. This is probably the most stunning piece of art in my opinion because of the amount of texture and detail there is in the painting. Most people tend to think that the balance, lighting or posing are the main reasons to why paintings are good but my opinion, is that Leonardo portrayed the image and made us feel like the person is standing right ahead of you.
The museum was a colossal museum that my legs were about to collapse a quarter of the way. We kept walking through the extensive path and couldn’t come to a decision on where to go. The museum was like a maze. To conclude our journey through time, we exited with some memorable photos. It was still surprisingly bright as we came out two-thirds uncompleted, however we spent most of the day on the most significant paintings and works. If you plan a visit, my only suggestion is to plan on visiting the main paintings first and then proceed with your decisions, as we fortunately managed to do. Completing the visit at Louvre will need two days easily, according to our analysis.
This delightful journey left us breathless and was extraordinary. Discovering these beauties was just amazing. It was such a pleasure taking a visit to France but was much more spell-bounding at the peak of Eiffel tower. With the gift of visiting these wonderful places I feel absolutely thrilled to say my experience was bewildering and I hope you too have a great time!
Leave a Reply