July 1, 2018
I arrived in Paris on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 27, 2018, and as I write these words, it's Sunday morning. I haven't adjusted to the new time zone, but I no longer feel like I'm walking through the city intoxicated. Jet lag is a strange experience.
After giving myself a few days to recover from jet lag, I took a bike tour of Paris with Bike About Tours. Our tour group was dominated by the Dutch—our guide was from The Netherlands too—which was awesome! I loved talking about biking with our tour guide and fellow tourists on the ride.
I loved the biking tour because it was a great way to see the city and learn about the history of Paris too. For example, our guide told us about Paris' ancient 1,000-year-old wall, secret gardens and passageways, one of the most expensive restaurants in Pairs, a famous and anonymous French graffiti artist (Invader), WWII memorials, and more.
I also saw the following sites on the bike tour—Hotel de Ville, Place Des Vosges, The Seine, Notre Dame, Ile St. Louis/Ile de la Cite, The Latin Quarter, St. Germain, Pont Neuf, The Louvre Museum, and many others. It's amazing what you can see by bike in just over three hours!
One of my favorite parts of the ride was cycling through a tunnel, which used to be for cars only. Our tour guide told us about Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo's new, and hotly contested, car-free policies. I can't wait to explore more of Paris by foot and bike.
Other than cycling and writing, I’ve been walking all over my neighborhood and into different arrondissements taking lots of photos with my iPhone. I'll leave you with a roundup of recent snapshots.
Bonne journée!
