Parigi - Paris (Part I: Around the City)

Well, I just got back from Paris a matter of hours ago. I've come back with way more pictures than my other trips (over 300), so I'll need to divide my trip up into multiple posts. This first post will be about the sights of the city, foods, and generally everything BUT museums. The second and third parts will be about the three very different museums I visited; the Orsay Museum, the Louvre, and the Museum of National Modern Art.
What a big city. We needed to metro practically everywhere, it was certainly bigger than Milan with a much more complex metro system. The general atmosphere of the city (while I was there) was not in itself charming. In contrast, Amsterdam was a beautiful city in itself and certain Italian cities like Genoa and Venice have their own charm. Paris is modernized (read: gray) like Milan or New York. The charm the city comes not from walking down a random street, but from seeing the scattered old architecture and finding decorated government buildings by turning a street corner. No, I did not fall in love with the city as some people seem to. Perhaps that is because of the cold temperatures, or cloudy, smoggy days occurring when I visited. That actually brings me to this article I discovered when I got home:
City of Lights dimmed
Paris has a temporary ban starting tomorrow on half the city's vehicles. Additionally, the metro is free. This was a funny coincidence finding this article, as we rode the metro free all Saturday and Sunday (after paying Thursday and Friday) and we had no clue why. I'm glad they are taking such measures. It's a temporary solution, but perhaps it will lead to bigger legal solutions.
But anyway, the city was certainly not ugly and I have no doubt that a summer tourist would find it beautiful. And the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Arch, and other individual structures were all really impressive! Without further ado, here's my commentary on the whole of my trip ignoring the large amount of time spent in museums:

See my album here.