Some Days in Paris
Logged a tenth of a Vanessa Carlton during a three day stroll through Paris.
In the spring of 2018 I spent about 10 days in Europe with half that time spent in France.
Within our first three days in Paris my group’s step count hit 100 miles — by day 4 my legs felt like they’d clocked a thousand — in an effort to take in as much of the city as we could in our limited time.
We went on a sunset river cruise along the Seine. While planning the trip we hadn’t nailed down a specific time to take it but after spending much of the day exploring all the sites around the river we just happened to time the boat ride with sunset.
The timing worked nicely with the Eiffel Tower being lit up midway through the ride.
In terms of recovering from the amassed step count it felt like I was able to recoup pretty quickly. We had a day of more casual walking and a very long wait for entering the Palace of Versailles, which really helped my legs recalibrate.
I would recommend purchasing timed entry tickets for Versailles, especially if you’re not looking for an hours long snake like queue and walking reprieve.
While the camera I had at the time of this trip was a little noisy (it made a lot of beeping sounds with the autofocus system and the shutter) and had a lot of wear and tear from a near decade of use (the grip was peeling away) I still managed to get some “candid” street photos since the camera was compact enough to prevent it from sticking out too much in the crowded streets.
While I was a little tired at the end of some of our busier days it was incredibly helpful that I had adjusted to the time zone at the outset of our visit, and didn’t feel like I was constantly readjusting to the “real“ time.
I normally do not have too difficult a time with my getting into a rhythm of sleep when I have traveled and try to power through the first 36-hours of a trip to get myself in the time-zone, and then go for one solid sleep at the outset.
Hours 20-30 can be rough, in college we had a professor push us through the jet lag and I nearly made it until we started reading the syllabus as a group. I could not help but nod in and out of focus, the childlike fear associated with round robin reading couldn’t fight the hooded weight of my eyelids.
On the first day of this trip, well into hour 20, we took our first solid walking break in a cafe. I was approaching delirium and thought my camera had been nicked, but I just forgot I put it under my jacket. That woke me up with a jolt.
Thankfully all the images have now been backed-up in multiple places.
