Hers was not a typical beginning to a freshman year in college. While they rest of her high school classmates were still back home soaking up the sun sitting by the pool, this particular college freshman joined her college classmates on a two week tour of Paris. Conducted during the month of August before the start of first semester, the college freshmen enjoyed many sites that would hook them on the wonder and educational value of traveling the world. In fact, after the two week visit to the City of Lights, this particular freshman immediately started making plans for touring Paris in the spring of her sophomore year.
During the summer college tour of The Palace at Versailles, the group met a family that had frequently hosted students from the Louisiana college and had invited them to return sometime. The plan for touring Paris in the spring would include a few nights with the host family, as well as a few nights in upscale Paris apartments.
Favorite Paris Sites Demand Repeat Visits
One favorite experience in Paris is walking through the hall of mirrors or wandering the gardens of The Palace at Versailles. This popular location is a perfect spot when touring Paris in the spring. It is known for its spectacular beauty and historical significance as well. The importance of Versailles peaked before the rights of man, before universal suffrage, before the French people even got to vote on their ruler, and certainly before women had any rights. A study of Paris Noir history helps American visitors see an entirely different side of French history that is usually skimmed over if mentioned at all in American textbooks.
Another favorite location of many visiting Paris for a second time is the famous room in the Louvre Museum with the Mona Lisa painting. The high ceilings speak to the painting’s sophistication and importance. The large room contains many more paintings besides the Mona Lisa, but none that anyone pays much attention to. Directly across from the Mona Lisa, for example, is a wall filled with a huge mural. The mural, probably twenty times the size of the Mona Lisa, attracts a small fraction of the number of people visiting the most famous painting in France. Touring Paris in the spring may provide visitors an opportunity to catch more than a glimpse of the Leonardo da Vinci piece of art. With luck, you may even get close enough to really analyze and appreciate it.
If you tire of crowds formed by the majority of the people in the Mona Lisa room, the Louvre also has entire rooms containing African art pieces. This space could not contrast more with the room housing the Mona Lisa. In comparison to the majestic, ornate decorations of much of the rest of the museum, the rooms containing the African art are far more modern. And while breathing room may seem hard to come by the closer you get to the famous da Vinci painting, the African Art exhibit is considered by some the coolest, least crowded room you will see all day. Glass cases house some pieces, but not the majority. You can get close enough to see all the intricate details easily, without having to push through a crowd. Far fewer people made it past the exits to see the African art exhibit, but those who did appreciate it far more than the crowds pushing as close as they could for one picture of the Mona Lisa. These differences highlight the the contrasts present in one of the most important art museums in the world.
Touring Paris in the Spring Encourages Leisurely Sight Seeing
Though the heat of the summer months can make Paris exhausting, spring time visits are wonderful. Venturing outside of Paris, visitors can choose from 4,000 tourist sites and events popular enough to attract 300 million visits a year. Among these locations are 8,000 museums and 45,000 listed or registered historical monuments. Accommodations in Paris provide relaxing settings to Americans, plus the 83% of foreign tourists visiting France who come from Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Spain. Another attraction to these visitors from around the world are the wine regions which support a dynamic industry that 24 million people visit a year.