Paris Visit

I visited Paris Last weekend (Stayed there for couple of days), It was a very interesting journey to Paris where at last minute we came to realize that Belgium Trains are at strike and there were no trains from Mechelen to Brussels, we had to share a taxi with a student from Japan and another professor looking guy. It costed us 35 Euros while a train journey would have costed us at the max of 6 Euros, Long Live Strikes..

I feel that was just a beginning and in the Brussels Central station we were taken for a ransom of 120 Euros for a return ticket as we did the booking just before an hour or so. Then the train strike cast its spells here as well, as the international trains leave only from Brussels Midi station , when we approached taxi guys, we got a reply saying that its pretty walkable. When we started walking we realized that we were lied to (May be the taxi drivers wanted to take advantage of strike and preffered to take only long journeys, Human mentality hardly changes ).


We were exhausted when we finally reached Midi station and when we boarded the train we were totally exhausted and we just crashed to our seats.


It was a super fast train (above) which reached Paris (Gare du Nord) in less than one and a half hours time . We were into to the land of "Oui"s and "Bon Jour"s and booked ourself into a hotel just opposite to the station and went for a Sight Seeing tour, after couple of hours I realized why Paris is so high in the books of romantics, there is a mystic aura that prevails in this city and it just takes you with it.

We were roaming around La Opera and went to Notre Dome and lot of other places around river

Siene where i got used to hearing "This was built during blah blah century and by blah blah blah for blah blah reasons" ot was a boring norm and the striking thing was the La Invalides where they have built a huge resting place for wounded soldiers and it was heartening to hear that Napolean personally visited the place to ensure the veterans got a good treatment.

After chilling out in the cold of the open bus, we settled back in the room and it was awesome to have a proper south indian food near the Gare Du Nord.

Whole of next day we spent in the Louvre (Still have doubts abt the pronounication) and i couldnt describe in the words, it would be a pure trance to any art lover and especially the classical european art. But somehow i was not really fascinated seeing Monalisa even at a closeup, I would rather prefer other works of Da Vinci than the Monalisa. The good find of the trip was my find of the impressionist paintings which i feel is really awesome. The main birth of impressionist movement was mainly rebellious of the norm and an urge to distinguish art from the photography. Its a typical competetive strategy of creating a new market place which impressionists did, where they wanted to outscore the photography which could take more vivid pictures of portrait and landscapes. Those loose brushes which leave an impression and which leave the viewer to guess this is really amazing and is philosophical as well.

Before going to Paris , i have never realized that
art could influence your life this much and i was very happy to have spent a bit to see paris and understand its mystical aura which we all still fail to grasp.

Couple of days after our trip i saw a movie called 2 days in paris and it was just what i wanted and is a great depiction of those who really dont understand what monsieurs live for.