Myron Liu — Paris

After reluctantly leaving the beautiful region of Beaucaire, we arrived in Paris. There it became a full on adventure travelling and transferring on the metro. Depositing our bags at the hotel Gay-Lussac at Luxembourg, we immediately headed to St Michel – Notre Dame. The Gothic cathedral of Notre Dame was very spectacular. With its multiple pointed arches, very tall spire, dual towers in front and the flying buttresses at the sides of the cathedral for support, Notre Dame was one of the highlights of the trip. Architecturally beautiful, it appeared to be the quintessential example of a Gothic church. I enjoyed exploring its interior with its amazing and massive rose windows.

Later that night, after wandering around the area past the town hall and then taking the train to Place de la Concorde, we went up the very expensive stores at the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe. There we had an enjoyable walk up the stairs to the very top where we had a beautiful 360 view of Paris at night.

The next few days went by very quickly with us exploring churches, the palace at Versailles, the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay and the Eiffel tower.

My favourite museum on the trip so far has been the Musée d’Orsay (though I didn’t truly get to explore the Louvre enough). I really enjoyed the Impressionist painting especially those by Claude Monet. It was interesting because I could spend well over 30 minutes at a single painting staring at it intently while moving back and forth to try understand what the painting was about.

The Louvre or at least the parts we saw was also awesome. After trying to push through the rather large crowd at the Mona Lisa, we wandered around the museum looking at the many, many different paintings. I really want to come back to Paris at some point to truly experience the Louvre and Musée d’Orsay completely.

Looking forward to the sights and shopping in London.