I’ve been lucky to visit and travel in Europe several times since the 1980s (especially Italy), but I’d still like to visit some cities that I’ve never been to including Stockholm, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Lisbon, Dublin, Edinburgh, Vienna, Berlin and Athens.
And I’d like to go back to Europe’s greatest city – Paris. I loved it in the holiday season, but I want to go back in warmer weather. Also, I want to see Notre-Dame when it reopens. Here’s how it looked last week, still under scaffolding. What a massive and complex restoration!
Hello blogging friends. I’m back from Paris and it was definitely a highlight of the year! My husband was a real trouper and enthusiastically went “full tourist” with me. (I wasn’t sure if that would happen, but he really rose to the occasion, despite having bad knees. Thanks Mario!) I had been to Paris once during my semester abroad in Italy in the 80s, but I always wanted to return to Europe’sgreatestcity. I’m sorry Rome, London, Madrid…but Paris is just…PARIS. I’m extremely fortunate that this was my second bucket list trip of 2023. I also visited the Grand Canyon, for the first time ever, in June. (That trip was motivated by the passing of my dear friend from college in 2022. Carla loved the Grand Canyon and her ashes are spread there.)
But back to Paris. We bought six-day museum passes (at the recommendation of my new BFF Rick Steves) and saw a ton of stuff. Notre-Dame is still closed due to the horrific fire in 2019, but everything else was open and the entire city is gearing up for the 2024 Olympics. We had dinner in the Eiffel Tower, visited the Louvre, the Orsay, l’Orangerie, Sainte-Chappelle, Arc de Triomphe, Carnavalet Museum, Versailles, the Army Museum and Napoleon’s Tomb, the Sacre-Coeur, and the St. Germain-des-Pres. We took ubers, taxis and the metro and visited many neighborhoods including the Marais (my favorite), Rue Cler, Montmartre, Rue Monorgueil, the Left Bank, and the Champs-Elysees, which was all lit up for Christmas!
We ate in cafes, fine restaurants, Bon Marché (Paris’ oldest department store) and one Burger King. I’m very jet-lagged at the moment, but cannot resist sharing a couple photos.
The Eiffel Tower is painted a mustard yellow and they light it beautifully at night.
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