The “Aix” in Aix-en-Provence is actually pronounced just like the English letter “X”. It originated from its original name Aquae Sextiae named after the Roman consul Sextius Calvinus. Today, it’s a university town. Near our AirBnB, most people that were out looked like students and were all young and trendy. Maybe this was why the café nearby even expected tips, while all the other places we’d visited didn’t (though that café was pretty hipster with its dishware made of recycled coffee grounds) .

Fountains make a prominent appearance throughout the city – people refer to it as the city of a thousand fountains. The most prominent is the Fontaine de la Rotonde. Even though nobody around stands to admire it (other than us), the hustle and bustle of the city gravitates around it.

Aix-en-Provence is also known for Paul Cézanne, an artist who was born there. Small little studs embedded in the street lead people to see places of significance in his life, such as the house of his birth, but not all the spots are clearly marked and people have stolen the studs in some parts.

Along the path is a confectionary called Maison Brémond 1830, known for its calissons, a candy originating from Aix-en-Provence. I’d only read about calissons from the tourist map from the tourist info centre, and here we stumbled upon a place for them without intentionally looking (it was even its flagship store of which the address is printed on the box).

The candy itself is mostly made of ground almonds, sugar, some citrus with a crust of icing. It’s quite simliar to marzipan, but fruitier.

It’s kind of pricey though – about $20 USD for a box of 30. The packaging is quite nice though – I kept the box after as a souvenir.

The one thing we missed here were the lavender fields nearby. Unfortunately, by the time we visited in September, the fields had all been harvested so we didn’t get to see any.

Powered by calissons on the drive, we headed over to our next destination, Marseille. Marseille is the oldest city in France and is also the second most populous. It was originally settled by the Greeks before the Romans took it. Because it’s a large city, naturally we were wary of pickpockets – we even saw people secure their bags and pockets if they had to pass through narrow spaces with lots of people. The parking lot we parked at had such tight security that there was an office of people looking at the security cameras constantly, and people could only enter the parking garage by foot if they had their original parking stub.

We walked along the stone wall of Place d’Armes to take in the sights of the city on the water.

The Place d’Armes is connected to the MuCEM (Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations), and it had a cool architecture to it. Originally when we were looking at what to do, we considered the MuCEM, but all the pictures online just seemed to show the cool architecture which was in the free part.

Marseille is also known for its soap. Traditionally it’s made from 72% olive oil, sea salt, alkaline ash from sea plants, and water. Lots of souvenir shops we’d encountered thus far on the trip were all selling the Marseille soap, but now we were here at the source.

Other stuff like coconut oil or scents can be added to the soap to change how bubbly it gets or its fragrance, but then it no longer considered to be Marseille soap.

The olive oil is supposed to be gentle on the skin, and the locals like it so much that they don’t just use it for showering. They’ll even shred the soap and mix the flakes with water to make their own laundry detergent.

We wandered around the city looking at the different soap stores and picked up a bunch of different ones. They had all sorts of sizes, even big slabs for people to chop up however they wanted.

I got to try the soap myself – it’s not very oily, not bubbly, didn’t lather well, but it did feel good on the skin. I can understand why people in North America prefer other soaps like the ones from L’Occitane.

The Fer à Cheval soap didn’t lather well, but the Marius Fabre one did. It could have been that one soap was older than the other, but there’s no way for us to know.

For dinner we got to try bouillabasse, a type of local fish stew. It’s served with grilled slices of bread. The idea is to pour the stew on the bread and eat it together. It’s a cool concept, but the stew is only as good as the fish that goes in it and in our case, it wasn’t all that interesting. I personally would have liked it to have a thicker consistency. The local herbs and spices helped a bit though. More high end places will even charge 50€ for it.

If we had more time, we would have liked to visit the basilica and cathedral. The architecture was just asking for us to visit.

Check here to see more photos of Aix-en-Provence and Marseille

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is in the historic region of Alsace-Lorraine. The unique thing about Alsace-Lorraine is that in the span of 100 years it has flipped back and forth multiple times between France and Germany as a result of three wars (the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and World War II). As a result, the city shares cultures from both countries. This is super evident in a part of town called Petite France, most notably the timber framing around each building. The local dialect Alsatian, also has Germanic origins.

It’s also the home of the European Parliament. This is where over 700 democratically elected Members of European Parliament pass legislation.

Thus far, in France, I had been speaking my very limited French here and there whenever I needed it. As we waited for the tour, a Middle Eastern fellow struck up a conversation with me in French, kind of just asking us where we were from etc. It was kind of weird, but we went along with it anyway – it didn’t seem like he was a pickpocket or anything. I managed to get pretty far in the conversation in French actually, which surprised me quite a bit. He told me that he had moved to France from Afghanistan after working there as part of the local security forces, and even showed me his old Afghan ID, and a bomb scar he had.

The conversation got super weird when he started asking about our yearly salary, and it seemed like he was asking us for money (but it’s possible some of that was lost in translation). At that point, we totally understood why he started the conversation in the first place. We basically told him that we’re not that well off either and he tried to give ME money, and I still don’t understand what was going on there. When the tour started, it seemed like he was still staying within our general vicinity, which made it even weirder. Eventually he picked up on that and left us alone. We even checked if he followed us back to our car (just in case).

Strasbourg appears pretty proud of their cuisine – even their postcards have pictures of recipes of different Alsatian dishes. One that we had was called Flammekueche (in German it’s Flammkuchen, so it’s easy to see the German influence in the language here, at least in this word). I think the closest analogue that English speakers would know would be a flatbread pizza, but with more French style ingredients like fromage blanc, and uses crème fraîche as a base as opposed to tomatoes.

From Strasbourg, we began our journey to Switzerland. At the border, we bought our vignette (it’s a required sticker on the car for driving in the country). I spoke to the lady in German and I got a nice feeling speaking and listening to a language that I understood again.

Habsburg Castle

Our first destination in Switzerland was the Habsburg Castle. This is where the House of Habsburg began. This is THE Habsburgs that wielded enourmous power in Europe for centuries, most notably the Holy Roman Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The castle looks quite modest compared to other European castles like Neuschwanstein, but this is because it was originally constructed almost 1000 years ago.

Zürich

As we drove through Switzerland, we expected mountain passes full of snow, but there were actually very few mountains along that route! We probaly would have seen some in Zürich itself, but too bad it was nighttime.

We arrived in Zürich just in time for a fondue and raclette dinner, because that’s what the stereotypes say. Of all places we found though, we found the most touristy one. I’m pretty sure everybody in there was a tourist.

As we were chatting while eating, I was trolling my friend, saying he comes from China even though he’s actually from Taiwan, since Taiwanese people stereotypically like to assert that Taiwan is not the same as China. A lady at our neighbouring table heard us and actually confronted us about it. She seemed so pissed off! She seemed fine once we told her we were just messing around, and that I’m from Hong Kong (people from there generally side with Taiwan). But imagine travelling all the way to Switzerland and hearing someone trashtalking your country!

This concludes our fourth day. Stay tuned for day five!

• Strasbourg
• Habsburg Castle
• Zürich

Our second day takes us to Oosterscheldekering, Ypres, and Dunkirk.

Oosterscheldekering (Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier)

We began our day two heading back into the Netherlands, to a network of storm surge barriers, designed to protect the Netherlands from flooding. Large sets of doors can open and close to control the water flow coming in from the ocean. They’re important because most of the Netherlands sits a few metres above sea level or lower, and thus are prone to flooding.

As we drove in the area of Oosterscheldekering, we encountered a lot of windmills spinning noticeably in the wind. And I wondered where all the old traditional windmills went, as in the ones with a tower made of brick with four rectangular fan blades . Netherlands has a stereotype of having a lot of them. We barely saw any of them and then it occurred to me that most of them were probably upgraded to use modern technology.

Ypres

Our next destination, Ypres, is known for the many battles that occurred there during the First World War, where the Germans introduced chemical weapons in the battlefield in the form of poison gas. During the course of the war, the town was destroyed, mostly by artillery fire.

The town was rebuilt after the war using German war reparations, with the main square following the original design as closely as possible. The In Flanders’ Fields Museum (the big building in the above picture) is a museum dedicated to the First World War.

Dunkerque (Dunkirk)

Our final destination for the day was the French port city of Dunkirk, known for the role it played during the evacuation of Allied forces from France. The Germans had achieved a breakthrough in France and had surrounded the bulk of Allied forces around Dunkirk. The German airforce was tasked to destroy these forces, so that the Germany army could conserve its ground forces for other operations, but the Germans failed to destroy the Allied forces and over 338000 soldiers were successfully evacuated to Britain.

That night, the locals were having a festival, called the “Bal du Chat Noir”, probably loosely translated as “The Black Cat Ball”. It’s so obscure that as of this writing, an English Wikipedia article for this festival doesn’t even exist. The French Wikipedia describes it as a festival to celebrate the opening of the carnival season (i.e. the Christian Carnival), and that it’s local to Dunkirk.

From what I can tell, it’s kind of like the Carnival in Cologne, where people party in the streets dressed up in costumes. There’s no shortage of reasons for people to party!

Stay tuned for day 3!

• Oosterscheldekering
• Ypres
• Dunkirk

First order of business after arriving: food. The last two times I was there as a poor student, we never splurged on food, but now as working professionals, I can! Frog legs? Okay.

With the Eurocup games being hosted in France and the terrorist attacks that happened in Paris, there were soldiers on the street in just about every place with crowds. If any terrorist attacks were to happen in Paris, it wouldn’t be during the Eurocup games.

Later that night, we met up with one of our friend’s coworkers for dinner. Time for more food. Escargot? Okay.

Beef tartare? Okay. We all had one for ourselves, and if anything bad were to happen, there was only one washroom in our AirBnB. Would have been game over.

The next day, we went to Versailles. Instead of taking pictures of things, I played Pokemon Go instead. It had just launched in USA, and since I had an account from that launch, I got to play. Everywhere I went, there was Pokemon. Never mind that it was a blazing hot day without much shade in the palace gardens. Gotta catch’em all. It was Pokemon Go everywhere I went – there’s even an arena at the Arc de Triomphe.

Make Napoleon great again!

After all the walking around, it was time for more food. Foie gras this time.

The next day was a trip to the catacombs and saw the skeletal remains of a lot of dead people.

And also visited a famous dead guy: Napoleon.

After that, it was time to go to the fan zone at the Eiffel Tower to watch France VS Portugal. All these people are trying to get in through the many entrances. The police guarding the gate were letting women and children go in without lining out while everyone else had to. Chivalry is alive and well in France.

After a long while of waiting we got in. There were so many people walking on the gravel road that it kicked up so much dust everywhere and it was hard to breathe and I was coughing every few minutes. It wasn’t comfortable at all. There were long lineups everywhere and nowhere to sit. But the atmosphere was really good. Lots of cheering and anticipation for a France win.

A friend of ours, who was coming from another location came too late and couldn’t get into the fan zone to meet up with us. After a grueling ordeal of deciding whether or not to stay or go, we left and watched the game from a small restaurant near our AirBnB.

After Portugal won, people still cheered in the streets and set up firecrackers and stuff. I couldn’t have imagined what it would have been like if France won. All the France fans would have lost their shits and the streets would have been even more rowdy.

The next day, it was time to fly back home, thus ending my 3rd European adventure.

Link to photo album: here

On the highest point of the ridge stands the memorial. On the base of the memorial, the names of the Canadian soldiers who were missing/presumed dead are inscribed.

One of the strategic purposes of this area (so called Hill 145) was that it served as a vantage point.

One of the strategies during World War I was the use of trenches to defend against enemy attack. Some of the trench networks have been preserved.

The tour guide explained that the trench networks are not perfectly straight because if an enemy force were to attack the trench, neither side could have perfect line of sight through the entire trench line.  At the same time, the height of the trench in the rear is slightly lower so that artillery shells may glide over, rather than bouncing off the trench wall and landing in the trench.

Looking out of the trench, one can see the so-called “No man’s land“. Neither side could freely move here without danger of getting fired upon. This area was once littered with mines, barbed wire, and corpses among other things. Repeated artillery bombardment and mine detonations created large craters in the terrain, which are still visible today. An electric fence still blocks the way into the no man’s land since there are still live mines here today.

The Canadian divisions transported personell and supplies through an underground tunnel, which a part of is also preserved. During the war, it was also way darker than shown in the picture and also infested by critters like rats. It was also quite common for some soldiers to sleep here.

For reference, this is what the battlefield looked like at the time (courtesy of Wikipedia).  It is pretty hard to see the resemblance between the historical pictures and what it looks like today.  Part of the reason is also that only a portion of the battlefield was preserved and the rest of it was redeveloped.

In Social Studies class in high school, I had learned about this place and its significance to Canada. I had seen a lot of World War II sites during my time in Europe, but this is one of the few times where I see a site related to World War I.

Link to the Vimy Ridge photo album

Sainte-Mère-Église

Quite a lot of fighting happened in this town during the Battle of Normandy. As a tribute to the paratroopers, there is now a model of a hanging paratrooper on the side of the church.

This place was also featured as a mission in the Call of Duty Series and here too I could see a lot of resemblance.

Museum of the Airborne

This museum is dedicated to the paratroopers during the Battle of Normandy. The biggest exhibit there was the C-47, the plane that the paratroopers flew in before they dropped.

The museum is situated just outside the church in the city centre.

La Fière

The guide explained that at the time, during the Battle of Normandy, the water level was much higher and the bridge was the only way across the river. The American paratroopers withstood fierce German counterattacks before they finally defended the bridge successfully.

As always, there is a monument of some sort.

Utah Beach

This was probably one of the beaches with the lightest amount of fighting, relatively as opposed to Omaha beach.  The bunkers here are also gone just like at Omaha.

Here’s a pretty artistic shot of a Flak 88 and the horizon.

Angoville-au-Plain

This church was a field hospital during the Battle of Normandy. The guide said the church was built around 425 AD, but other sources say its from the 12th century.

In the church, there are still some scars from the fighting. In particular, there is a patched up hole from where a mortar shell once dropped. It seems it was stuck in the ceiling and never exploded.

Some of the church pews still have blood stains on them.

Driving Back to London

On the way back to London, we stopped at the Canadian World War I memorial at Vimy Ridge. After that, we drove back to France. At the border, the British border guard gave us such a hard time. She kept asking questions like, “why are you travelling?”, “where are you getting the money for this trip?”, “what do you do for a living?”, etc. I didn’t think we looked that suspicious.

When we first drove to France, Edward drove for most of it, but on the way back, I wanted to try driving in London just to see what it felt like. Every moment of the drive was quite stressful for me.

The weird part was that because the lanes are narrower, the driver almost always naturally leans to the left side of the lane and the left side mirror is over the lane divider.  Through construction sites, we’d drive past the orange traffic cones and if those were a tad bit taller, the mirror would have hit them.  We both ran up the curb a few times during the drive too. Luckily, we returned the car in one piece and without and scratches or dents.

Links to photo albums:

• Normandy
• Normandy (Edward’s Photos)

We took the Euro Tunnel crossing into France.  It is an underground train that cars can board that takes commuters across the English Channel.  It only took about 20 minutes and it departed from Folkestone to Calais.

The drive into Normany is quite nice too. We were a bit sad that the car’s (Volkswagen Golf TDI) top speed was only 180 km/h though (we tested that).

Our hotel was in Caen, and in the next morning we drove to Bayeux to meet the tour group. Our tour guide was a native from Normandy who used to serve in the French military. He knew quite a lot of the history behind the Battle of Normandy, so he was a really great guide.

When I got out of the car, I could immediately feel my allergies acting up.  Within a few minutes, my nose was extremely plugged and my eyes were itchy.  Worst of all, I left my medicine at the hotel.  My allergies stayed with me for the entire day.  It was the worst allergic reaction I’ve had in recent memory.

Longues-sur-Mer Battery

The first stop were the gun batteries at Longues-sur-Mer. It was part of Germany’s Atlantic Wall coastal fortifications.

The line of batteries were just situated on a large grass field.  There wasn’t really anything else in the area other than other bunkers that were part of the fortification.

Omaha Beach

I was surprised to see that the bunkers at Omaha Beach had all been taken away. Apparently the locals disposed of them since they didn’t want to keep such structures from their foes to stay.

The guide explained that the attack on D-Day began while the beach was at high tide, which meant the soldiers had to wade through more water than they would have during low tide. This meant the soldiers were slower and had a greater danger of drowning. Because of this, the American forces that invaded took heavy casualties. The guide also mentioned that a huge factor that caused the Germans to lose the battle was that they were running out of ammunition after killing so many attackers.  The water ran red for days.

Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial

Many soldiers who died during the Battle of Normandy are buried here. The fallen soldiers’ next of kin were given a choice as to whether the burial would take place in the US, or overseas.

The site was quite large. It probably took about 10-15 minutes to walk from one side to the other.

Pointe du Hoc

During the battle, the soldiers had to scale these cliffs just to get to the enemy and they did this while getting shot at.

I remember playing Call of Duty 2 a long time ago and there was a mission about this very battle. The bunker here was modeled pretty much the same too.

Before the battle began, the air force and navy heavily bombarded this area and so there are many craters here. After so many years, grass has grown over them.

The Hedgerows

The guide explained that while the Allies were gathering intelligence for their invasion planning, local French people had told the Allies that there’d be lots of hedgerows to watch out for. It never occurred to the Allies that the hedgerows in France were significantly taller than the hedgerows that they were used to and so they thought the soldiers could see over them. Nope, they’re way taller than a standing person.

When the paratroopers landed in the night, a lot of them couldn’t find each other. The Germans used this to their advantage and set many traps in and around the hedgerows.

To Be Continued…

Since this post is already getting quite long, I’ll be continuing the rest of the Normandy trip in a second post.

Links to photo albums:

• Normandy
• Normandy (Edward’s Photos)

This post is dedicated to how we almost got stranded in Normandy and “misdropped” just like the American paratroopers on D-Day Minus 1 back in 1944. We were right where we were supposed to be, but nothing else was.

Getting to Normandy

Having researched this part before leaving for France, I knew that trains ran from Paris to Caen from Paris Saint Lazare Station. And with our EURail Pass, we could just board any of these trains freely and go at whatever time we wanted. I had booked a hotel in Saint Lo, and the plan was to visit Caen, and then get to Saint Lo in the evening.

Caen

Caen was a city with a rich history, but I only knew it from the Battle of Caen during the larger Battle of Normandy in 1944. While here, I saw a lot of war memorials and architecture leftover from the days of William the Conqueror.

The city itself was very beautiful and really had a French vibe. Unlike Paris, this place isn’t as frequented by tourists. And also the French people here are a lot less snobby and more nice to foreigners. People in Normandy also seem to have immense respect for Americans and the British.

I also got to see the horse statue that always appears in World War II games that feature Caen in it (e.g. The Caen map in Day of Defeat). I’m not sure if it’s the same horse statue, but this one sure reminded me of it.

After staying for a bit in Caen, we decided to go to Saint Lo. In order to do that we had to make a stop in Bayeux and make a transfer.

Bayeux

This is where the shit started to hit the fan. We arrived in Bayeux just to find out that all the buses were closed and there were no more trains going to Saint Lo until 11 at night. By the time we arrived in Bayeux it was around 9:30. We weren’t even sure if that train at 11 was even going to come. The only solution to get to Saint Lo was with a taxi. We looked around the station and saw a bunch of advertisements for D-Day beach tours until we finally found a number for a taxi. When the taxi driver came, he told us that it would cost a lot of money to get to Saint Lo from where we were. So then we tried to look for a place to stay in this city, but since D-Day is a high season for tourism in Normandy, it proved impossible to find a hotel/hostel with room for us. In the end we had to take the taxi anyway. When we called for a taxi the second time, the same taxi driver came back to pick us up too. It was kind of strange. Before actually picking us up, the taxi driver told me he’d come back in five minutes and then ten minutes later he was still not back. I called out in frustration, “five minutes my ass!”, and then a minute later, the taxi driver came back.

While looking for a place to stay, we wandered around time wondering what we were going to do. But even in our crisis, I somehow still kept a really chill attitude on the outside, although I was quite frustrated on the inside. I was still in the mood to take lots of photos though. While walking around, one of my friends broke out in song and started singing a song about how we were “lost in the middle of nowhere.”

Saint Lo

As the taxi entered Saint Lo and started driving to the outskirts of the city, we realized that the hotel we booked was in the middle of nowhere. Even though it was 7 km from the city center, the town only had a population of about 20000 people. The man at the hotel greeted us and checked us in. Inside the hotel we found pamphlets for the city bus that we would use to go to the city center the next day. And from there, we’d take a train/bus to a nearby town and go to the D-Day beaches. Looking further into the pamphlets, I discovered that the bus wouldn’t run on Sunday. It just so happened that we arrived on Saturday night. That sucked a lot.

The next morning, I asked the man at the hotel how to get to the city center and to the D-Day beaches and using his heavy French accent (it was kind of cool to hear), he told us that the only way to do it was using a taxi. That was definitely not the answer I wanted to hear. Before coming to France, I was under the misconception that the trains here would be well connected and that transportation to the D-Day beaches would not be a problem so I did not plan my transportation in Normandy in such detail. It was more of a “figure it out when we get there” sort of thing.

Rather than taking a taxi, we tried to walk to the city center and about 15 minutes into our walk, we all kind of got tired of walking and didn’t feel like walking 7 km, so we went back to the hotel to call a taxi. Luckily, the man at the hostel was very helpful (probably the nicest French guy I’ve come across), and he gave us the phone number for the taxi in the city. When we arrived at the Saint Lo train station via taxi, we found that there were no trains running to where we wanted to go. That is when we figured, “okay, maybe it’s time to get outta here.” We looked at the train departures again, and the next train to Caen wasn’t until 3 PM, and it was only 10 AM or so when we arrived at the Saint Lo station. We decided that the best plan of action now was to just cancel our second night at the hotel and go back to Stuttgart.

Instead of taking a taxi back to the hotel, we walked back to the hotel, cancelled our second night’s stay and walked back to the train station. Luckily the nice Frenchman at the hotel did not penalize us for cancelling our second night. I’m sure he realized that we were all having a hard time trying to arrange transportation to the beaches.

Using the time we had before our train, we walked around Saint Lo. The weather that day matched pretty much exactly what the weather was in ’44 and for me it felt kind of cool to see that the weather had stayed so constant over the years. The morning was cold and foggy, just like back then. For most our time in Saint Lo, we walked around with umbrellas. While walking around town, there was literally no one on the street except us. I guess everyone goes to church on Sundays and then goes home in Normandy.

Even though our plans didn’t work out, we did see a few cool things in Normandy like many of the war memorials and war damage that the city chose to leave behind and not repair. A good example is of the Notre-Dame here that kept some of the damage like the missing church tower to show others of the damage that the church suffered. Apparently over 90% of homes in Saint Lo were destroyed during the war.

If our plans had worked out, we would have been able to visit Carentan, and see the live paradrop in the nearby town of Sainte-Mère-Église. Then afterward, we planned to make our way to Omaha Beach, Pointe du Hoc to be exact. If our plans in Normandy had worked out, we would have even gone to Brussels afterward. Instead, I never got the chance to see any of the beaches and came home a day early. If I ever come back here, I’ll be sure to take a car.

Photos:

• Caen
• Bayeux
• Saint Lo

From the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur, to the Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Musee du Louvre, and the Arc de Triomphe, it wasn’t very hard to take tons of photos in Paris because all the tourist attractions were just so beautiful.

After being in Europe for over 2 months, I finally visited Paris three days ago. Going to Paris is something that many people in North America (probably the world too) dream to do. I woke up early in the morning for my train from Stuttgart that left at 7 and met up with my friends from Bosch.

On the train, sitting together proved rather difficult because that went against the preassigned seating provided by the French TGV. We tried our best to find vacant seats, but in the end, two of us ended up sitting elsewhere. I managed to sit with the rest of the group for the duration of the train ride.

Along the way, the train passed through the French countryside. Only farm fields separated Paris and Stuttgart, with the exception of a few cities and towns. We joked about how the only things in France were farm fields and an Eiffel Tower. After a four hour journey, we arrived at the eastern train station in Paris.

The train station in Paris set my first impression the city. I didn’t see Paris in the beautiful setting that all the tourism advertisements showed. Seeing that the first place I go to in any city is often the train station, I ended up basing my first impression on that. To my surprise, the metro here lacked the maintenance that the trains in Stuttgart got. In general, the trains looked much dirtier and vandalized in more places. I saw graffiti in all of the train tunnels, and beside all the train tracks. In some areas, the station smelled like a dirty washroom. The trains themselves looked very old as well, but that’s just aesthetics. One of the trains even used tires and not train wheels, so it ran like a bus on train tracks. Despite this, the metro served as our only means of transportation within the city. We took the train to our first destination.

Our first destination was the Sacre-Coeur, a basilica located on the summit of butte Montmartre, the highest point of Paris. Unfortunately, the Sacre-Coeur was not exactly in the best part of town. The enormous amount of street performers, street vendors, and people trying to get me to donate money caught my attention right away. They really liked bugging the foreigners. I guess they think that if foreigners can afford to come to Europe, they must have lots of money. Some of them were like pushy salesmen that wouldn’t leave people alone. Some of them even know how to greet people in different languages. I heard them say phrases like “ni hao”, “konnichiwa”, and “arigatou”. I wondered about how many more of these people there’d be at the Eiffel Tower, when I already saw of many of these people at a lesser known landmark. I tried my best to ignore these people and focus on where I was, the Sacre-Coeur.

Looking at the basilica from afar reminded me of the Dom in Cologne, but this place was a little smaller. Unfortunately, the church did not permit photography, otherwise I’d post pictures of this place. I must say though, after seeing the Cologne Dom, this place didn’t seem that special to me.

When we left for the Notre Dame afterward, we passed through the poorer part of town. For some reason a big crowd of people stood outside selling prepackaged food that one could get from the supermarket. Why would they end up selling the food that they bought? Or maybe they never bought them at all.

Our next destination was the Notre Dame. The Notre Dame was one of those places that almost everybody knew, so many tourists visited it. In fact, there were so many tourists there that the city decided to post armed guards wielding FAMA’s at the site in case anybody tried to cause trouble. Like many other European churches, the church also had the old European design. The design here definitely rivaled the Cologne Dom.

The Notre Dame was situated beside the Seine River, so the natural next thing to do was to walk along the Seine. Unlike the Rhine River, the Seine was a lot more polluted. As we walked, I saw many more street vendors, but these ones sold retro photographs of Paris, post cards and various antiques. In the distance, we could see the Eiffel Tower. Before heading there though, we went to visit the outside of the Louvre. Seeing the pyramid in the courtyard instantly reminded me of The Da Vinci Code, when they revealed the location of the Holy Grail. Further outside the Louvre was the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel which was a smaller arch that served the same purpose as the Arc de Triomphe. Further down the road, was an obelisk that Napoleon once took from Egypt during the Napoleonic Wars.

We walked along the Avenue des Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, but before getting there, we had to hurry to the Eiffel tower so that we didn’t miss the time we reserved online. Because of our reservation, we didn’t have to wait hours like everyone else. Hundreds, if not thousands of tourists waited their turn. As I expected, there were a lot of street vendors here too, but the ones here weren’t as pushy.

In every picture I’ve ever seen the Eiffel Tower looked so small, so the sheer size of it total surprised me. At the base of the tower, I tried to take as many pictures as I could of the tower using the photography knowledge that I crammed the night before. Hopefully, my pictures turn out really well.

The view at the top of the Eiffel Tower totally struck me in awe. One could see as far as the eye could see. I pretty much saw all of Paris from here. In the distance, I could point out some of the landmarks such as the Louvre, Seine River, Arc de Triomphe, and Les Invalides. I also saw how the streets were laid out in the whole city. It differs a lot from the modern urban planning in the way that the roads don’t form grids. They seemed to go in random directions. No wonder it was so hard to find where we were going at times.

I could even see rain clouds slowly moving toward us. We didn’t choose the best day to go to Paris, but we couldn’t exactly predict the weather a month in advance. On the way down, it rained pretty hard, but it stopped about two hours later.

In the evening, we decided to go for a drink at a local cafe, since we were all so tired from carrying our things and walking around all day. Looking at the menu, I found that the price of beer is very high. In Stuttgart, I typically pay around 3 to 4 euro for half a litre of beer, but here, it costs 8 euros. That makes sense, I guess. Stereotypes do say that Germans are a lot more crazy about their beer than the French. I ended up trying a beer called Saint Omer. I don’t really know how to describe the beer so I can only really say that it tasted quite good, but not as good as German beer though.

After our little break, we went back to the Eiffel Tower to take pictures of it from afar. As the sky began to darken, the tower lit up. It must look even prettier at night. Unfortunately, we didn’t stick around to see it.

We went to the hostel since we were all so tired. For dinner, we ate baguettes that we bought from the local supermarket. And since we were in France, we had to have a bottle of wine. From the window, we could see the Sacre-Coeur.

After dinner, we went around some more to see what Paris looked like in the night. Because of the rain earlier, the wet cobblestone roads reflected the lights nearby. We stopped at a bar for a quick drink before heading home. This time, I ordered a beer called an Amstel. It had quite a strange after taste. By about 11:30 pm, we were all ready to sleep because we all woke up so early to catch the train and walked around so much, so we went back to the hostel where would recharge before continuing our journey the next day.

Little did we know when we organized our trip to Paris, this weekend would fall on the time change for daylight savings time, and as a result we had one less hour in Paris. We just slept one hour less to make up for it.

In the morning, we woke up early to get to the Louvre when it opened to avoid the enormous line up that we saw the day before. After passing the security check, we went to get our tickets. To our surprise, residents of the EU could get admission for free. I showed the ticket staff my work visa and got my free ticket. That saved me ten euros.

The main highlight of the Louvre was probably the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci. I don’t think many people know why the painting is so famous, and I don’t either. Like everyone else, I went to see it purely because it’s famous.

The whole area we were in housed many Italians and Spanish paintings from the Renaissance. I didn’t understand any of the paintings, but I noticed that people back then really liked to paint about Christianity. A lot of the paintings showed Jesus on the cross. In other paintings, they really liked to paint naked people. Naked men, women and kids showed up in so many paintings.

The next group of exhibits we went featured art from the Americas, Africa, and Asia. They displayed mostly sculptures from various native groups living in the area a long time ago. It was quite interesting to see the difference in art among all these cultures.

Afterward, we looked at the section on Egyptian art. Here they showed various relics left over from the Ancient Egyptian civilization. They displayed various styles of sarcophagi used in the past and also urns of mummified remains. Among all the relics, the ones they showed the most were the stone tablets and papyrus paper with hieroglyphics written on them. I don’t know what any of it means, so for all I know the writing could just be something ordinary like, “today I went fishing by the river.”

At this point, we realized that the museum was so large that we wouldn’t be able to get through it all. So we looked at the map and chose to see what we wanted to see most.

We then arrived at the exhibit about French culture from the 14th to 17th century. The decorations in the rooms was decorated the same way as the old French style and it made the room look so beautiful.

Our next exhibit was Ancient Greece. The majority of items here were statues of the Greek Gods. These statues were pretty much everywhere, but they were all interesting too. It goes to show how devout the Greeks were when it came to worship.

The next item on our list was to find the Code of Hammurabi. Along the way, we went through the exhibit for Mesopotamia. Although not far from Greece geographically, their culture differed immensely.

When we arrived at the Code of Hammurabi, I saw a giant stone, but on it were a set of laws inscribed into it. It basically spoke of the consequences of actions that people did. A lot of it resembled the principle of “an eye for an eye”. For example, if a builder builds a house collapses on its owner, then the builder shall be put to death.

After being at the Louvre for about five hours, we were ready to leave. We didn’t even see half of the museum. I’m sure there are people that stay there for like ten hours or something. I even saw people sitting down with their artboards and drawing the sculptures they saw. As we left, we saw a huge crowd of people waiting to get in. I’m glad we went early. We barely waited at all.

After leaving the Louvre, we went to the metro to make our way to the Arc de Triomphe, located on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, the rich district in Paris. It is a monument constructed for Napoleon to showcase his triumphs. It stands in the center of the Place Charles de Gaulle. The monument also honours the soldiers who fought and died for France during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Also there is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from the First World War.

The flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is always lit. It serves as a memorial for all the soldiers killed in action who could not be identified during the First World War. I went up to the grave to pay my respects and gave him the traditional three bows that the Chinese typically give to the deceased.

Also there was a plaque of Charles de Gaulle’s famous BBC radio speech to the French people in 1940, telling them not to lose hope, and that the war does not only affect France, but rather the entire world.

The arc also named the major victorious battles of the Napoleonic Wars. The inside walls of the arc name most of the generals who served under Napoleon and the names of those who died are underlined.

When we were finished at the arc, we went back to the Eiffel Tower to get one last look of it before leaving. On the side of the tower were the names of famous French engineers. As an engineer, myself, I had to look at each name to see which ones I recognized. I ‘d say I knew about a quarter of them. They were people like, Lagrange, Carnot, Ampere, Fourier, Clapeyron and Laplace.

While we all took more pictures of the tower, we had the idea of getting our French friend to wear the stereotypical French hat and hold a baguette while we took pictures of him with the Eiffel Tower in the background. It was so stereotypically French that this teenage girl got so excited seeing that she wanted a picture with him. We joked that if working at Bosch didn’t work out for him, he could make a living taking pictures with tourists in Paris! We stayed there until it was time leave for our train back home.

Paris was quite a beautiful city to visit, especially in the tourist locations, but some parts of the city were quite dirty, especially on the metro. That part of the city I didn’t really like, but the rest was amazing.

On the train, I tried to go to my assigned seat, but unfortunately a family had taken up all the seats there. I didn’t want to make them all find new seats, since I knew how hard it was to get everyone to sit together as a group without reservations, so I went to find an empty seat instead.

On the way home, due to some technical difficulty, the train made an unscheduled stop in the middle of nowhere. This delayed us by about twenty minutes and we all wondered how we were going to catch our connecting train. We found out later that our connecting train was going to wait.

As we crossed the border, the police came by checking people’s passports. In the entire wagon, only one of my friends and I were checked for passports. They did that probably because of the fact that we looked foreign.

As the train got closer and closer to Stuttgart, I was reminded of the fact that I’d have to go to work the next day and that I’d return to my usual routine once again. At the same time, I felt really good about the fact that I can now cross off another place on my list of places to visit.

Photo album here