Paris is big and expensive, and our pockets were not deep enough to fit it in. So, when we planned our short Euro trip, we squeezed in a long layover at Charles de Gaulle Airport.
This is our layover in Paris story. It is not perfect, but we did manage to cover the two most monumental sites of this iconic city— the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. Notre-Dam Cathedral was on our wish list, but the site is temporarily closed for restoration.
Our flight landed around 6.30 am and our priority was to find the luggage storage area, and boy it took us half an hour to navigate the huge airport. After 45 minutes-ish of wandering the whole place, we found the “Bagages du Monde” store.
Did I mention the airport was huge? So, the next step was to find the shuttle bus that’ll take us the terminal 2A, from where we need to buy metro tickets to the city. Fortunately, the airport appoints many professionals to guide clueless tourists like us. It’s quite natural for people to book long flights with Paris layovers and English-speaking police nationale’ guides every layover tourist on how and where to get places. So, don’t worry, you won’t be lost.
Our first destination was Louvre, we got down at Rue de Rivoli station, walked for almost 15 minutes, and viola! We reached the famous Grand Louvre, the world’s most visited art museum, and also the one lodging Madam Lisa. Of course, the crowd is inevitable, and we did prefer the scorching heat to minus degrees. Good thing, I was bought up in Palakkad, the motherland of the SUNN! After one long hour in the queue (that’s after taking the tickets online), we were herded inside through the glass pyramid. The museum, originally Lourve castle, was established as a defensive fortress in 1190 by King Philippe Auguste. Because its purpose was to defend against English invasion, it was designed for physical and symbolic strength, not beauty, and featured little in the way of decoration.
On the contrary, the giant glass structure that serves as the current entrance of the museum has an interesting history. It was built in honor of the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu who reigned from 2504-2512 BC. As for the structure, the makers ordered a special type of extra-clear glass from Saint Gobain, now called Diamant glass!
Once we were inside, we followed the directions for the Mona Lisa, and believe me when I say this, it is truly the most sought-after painting in this ginormous museum that exhibits over 37,000 objects, because the herd kept moving in the same direction we went!
Venus de Milo, Winged Victory of Samothrace, Coronation of Napolean, and Liberty Leading the People, are some of the other famous paintings and artifacts.
If you are an art student or someone well-versed in the art world, you might prefer to spend the whole day here (although, it’ll take a couple of days to see all the 35,000 individual artworks). As for us, we had little to no time and badly wanted to visit the tower. So, after a couple of hours at the Louvre, we went our way to spend time under THE Eiffle Tower!!
The French streets are good looking, but more than the architecture, I got carried away looking at all the gorgeous french subjects (do all the stunning people move to Paris, is that a thing?) After some leg-breaking walk about the town, we reached the Seine beholding the tower at its other side. Man, was thrilled, it was almost like viewing the Taj Mahal (yeah, I think the Taj Mahal is way stunning structurally, and yes, this could be my Indian ego speaking). But, it sure is a global cultural icon for France, and it has its historic significance to it.
Some cool facts about Gustave’s tower— it was once the world’s largest billboard, it is undoubtedly one of the world’s most recognizable landmarks, and it has approx 6 million visitors each year!
We spend an hour or so under the tower and its surrounding garden. We didn’t really have the time to climb up the tower, it takes about two hours, and so the layover trip ended there:)
We headed back to the airport via the metro. You can see our Paris layover video here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGKPgRasDgo
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