Some Things Are Overrated, Some Exceed the Hype

Some Things Are Overrated, Some Exceed the Hype
When I arrived at Notre Dame Cathedral during our walking tour I saw just another Cathedral. Someone had to tell me it was Notre Dame. This is not to say that it was not impressive, even beautiful. It was simply routine. I have seen many cathedrals and Notre Dame does not especially stand out. It was crowded. In other cathedrals I could walk around at my leisure and stare up. At Notre Dame I would be knocked over.
There were smaller churches that interested me more. The Cathedral in Triere was older, had no stained glass windows and was really interesting. There were several catholic churches in Paris that were also worth seeing.
At the Louvre I saw the Mona Lisa. It is overrated. Truth be told I do not consider it to be an exceptional work of art. It is small, dingy and famous for being famous. There were many more impressive paintings there. There were two sided paintings, one was of David slaying Goliath and it depicted the seen from the back and the front. Both looked good.
The group I was with stopped outside of a club called Moulin Rouge. Before then all I knew was it was a title of a movie I had never seen that I was pretty sure had Nicole Kidman in it. After we visited the Eiffel Tower on our last evening here everyone wanted to go look at the outside of it. I didn’t get the appeal. It’s a place with a windmill on top. We saw a very nice looking café in the Arts District that had a windmill on top.
Other things lived up to the hype. The Eiffel tower was amazing. Some of us climbed it and it was worth it. The first stop was large; it had a cafeteria and little park area. Further up there was an area with a souvenir shop and the staging area for the elevator to the top. Both had incredible views. The final stop, at the top, had two levels. The first was glassed in and had signs above the glass showing the direction and distance of various cities. The second level was open and had a small stall selling champagne for about 15 Euros/100 mL.
Seeing the Eiffel Tower at night was equally impressive. We came down after it was dark and the lights made the building even more beautiful. There was a five minute light show on the hour after sunset that had large lights like camera flashes light up the building in dizzying patterns. I had expected them to all flash at once at the end but they didn’t. They just went out and that renewed the wonder in the tower’s beauty.
The Louvre itself was impressive. It was immense, it would take at lest a day to walk through every room. Viewing each object with more than a passing glance would take days or even weeks. Appreciating each object, or even most of the objects would take weeks or months. There were paintings that towered above the viewer and Egyptian artefacts smaller than the hand.

Aaron Sauve