Paris.ExpeditionBug.com

It's little wonder that so many wistful songs have been penned over the
years about France's capital, Paris . Few cities leave the visitor with such
vivid impressions, whether it's the drifting cherry blossoms in the tranquil
gardens of Notre-Dame, the riverside quais on a summer evening, the
sound of blues in atmospheric cellar bars, or the ancient alleyways and
cobbled lanes of the historic Latin Quarter and villagey Montmartre.

Paris has no problem living up to the painted images and movie myths
with which we're all familiar. Indeed, the whole city is something of a work
of art. Two thousand years of shaping and reshaping have resulted in
monumental building, sweeping avenues, grand esplanades and
celebrated bridges. Many of its older buildings have survived intact,
having been spared the ravages of flood and fire and saved from Hitler's
intended destruction. Moreover, they survive with a sense of continuity
and homogeneity, as new sits comfortably against a backdrop of old - the
glass Pyramid against the grand fortress of the Louvre, the Column of
Liberty against the Opéra Bastille. Time has acted as judge, as buildings
once surrounded in controversy - the Eiffel Tower, the Sacré-Coeur, the
Pompidou Centre - have in their turn become well-known symbols of the
city. Yet for all the tremendous pomp and magnificence of its monuments,
the city operates on a very human scale, with exquisite, secretive little
nooks tucked away off the Grands Boulevards and very definite little
communities revolving around games of boules and the local boulangerie
and café.

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