We'll always have Paris

Last week, we took the Eurostar under the Chunnel to meet my folks for a few days in Paris. (I also took the opportunity to meet some remote co-workers at the Amazon.fr office.) We had a wonderful time, and finally managed to edit most of the footage down to the following four segments:

Bus Tour

One thing that's worth doing in any big city is hopping onto one of those open-top buses and getting a quick introduction to what all's available, where things are in relation to each other, and what looks interesting enough to merit a closer visit on foot. The following is set to the credits score from the Bourne trilogy, which featured many a high-speed chase through the streets of Paris:

Be Our Guest

This is kind of a parody of all the pictures (and slides...endless slides!) that my Dad used to bring home from my parents' trips to Europe, in which my Mom nearly always happened to be snacking on some local delicacy. Since Paris is synonymous with grossfine cuisine, it seemed appropiate to document some of the highlights as we chewed our way across the capital:

Eiffel Tower

Well, you can hardly come to town and not visit this emblematic icon. Although we walked by and under it enroute to other stops, we didn't go up the elevator until our final morning in the city, before dragging our luggage back to the Gare du Nord. Note that, while it is fairly straightforward going up the tower, there are two elevators coming back down; the one we took terminates about halfway down, leaving you to navigate the stairs for the rest!

Lourve

We allocated one full day to exploring the famous musée of Paris, dutifully stopping to verify all the plot twists in Dan Brown's factually-challenged bestseller:

Of course, there is so much more to be said about Paris, and France and Europe in general, but that'll have to wait for another time :-)