After Lon­don, Paris. Don’t hate me for say­ing it, but at first sight, it felt like going from Peru to Bolivia.

I have never liked Paris. Go ahead, call me a lit­tle spoiled French girl, I’m used to it. Say­ing you don’t like Paris usu­ally makes you get hate look from peo­ple who are dream­ing to visit the city of lights, and it brings con­tempt from other French peo­ple. They shrug at me, say­ing: «oui mais bon… c’est Paris quand même !».

I’ve been to Paris a thou­sand of times, as a tourist, a concert-goer, and a stu­dent. The only way I can stand the city for more than a few days is by going full tourist mode. In fact, most of the time, I just pre­tend I don’t speak French. Parisians see me as an idiot but a for­eign idiot, so it’s not as bad in their eyes.

My main issue with Paris is that life is very dif­fi­cult there. Accom­mo­da­tion is crazy expen­sive and so are the sub­way (€1.70 per ride!), food in gen­eral and tick­ets to var­i­ous attrac­tion. The city is dirty — very dirty. You remem­ber me prais­ing the Lon­don tube? Well, in Paris we rode packed sub­way with no air-con and peo­ple puk­ing around us. Seriously.

I think that Paris is rest­ing on its lau­rels. Because “it’s Paris”, because there are so many sights and because the city was once beau­ti­ful and famous, peo­ple visit it any­way. Yet locals don’t try to make it wel­com­ing and every­thing is over­priced. Only in Paris one star hotels at the 7^th floor of an old build­ing with toi­lets out­side the room cost €50.00 per night. Only in Paris a sand­wich is €10 and a bot­tle of water as much as €4. And peo­ple suck it up — because it’s Paris.

Never mind. I’ll stop bitch­ing and I’ll leave you with the best sights!

You can fol­low our French trip here on Flickr: France (2010).

Place Charles de Gaulle

I Love Paris

Arche de Triomphe

Les Champs-Élysées

Shop­ping at Dior (not me!)	Avenue Mon­taigne
Detail of Pavement	Champs-Élysées
Notre-Dame	Notre-Dame
In a Café	Banks of the Seine River

In a Small Cof­fee Shop

Notre-Dame

Related arti­cles:

1. Sights of Paris (Part II)
2. Paris By Night
3. Ah, Paris! (1÷2)
4. The Lon­don Eye
5. Ah, Paris! (2÷2)