The 9 Most Overrated Places To Go In Paris If You Are A Tourist
Oh, we do love Paris in the springtime.
The Moulin Rouge
Why not? This cabaret where the can-can was supposedly invented was no doubt once risqué but now feels obscene – mainly because of the euros it screws out of the coach-fulls of tourists that visit.
Tickets to the show alone start at a barely believable €100, which makes the bovine-like tourist-herding feel all the richer. Then there are the seedy surrounds of the Boulevard de Clichy, where the club is located.
Go here instead: Just a few doors down from the Moulin Rouge, on the same boulevard, the Museum of Eroticism offers a far franker investigation of human sexuality.
Not that the 2,000 sex aids, fetish objects and erotic works of art spanning cultures and history really appear as high-minded as the museum pretends, but they’re sure to broaden the mind.
© Paris Tourist Office/José Serur Yedid
The Mona Lisa
Why not? Poor Mona, eyeballed more times than there are stars in the galaxy. The Louvre doesn’t help by encasing the famed portrait in a kind of reinforced-glass coffin to guard against damage and theft.
Sure, the (surprisingly small) portrait of a 16th-century Florentine idlewoman occupies an important place in art history but it’s hard to tell peering at it over the rock-concert-like throngs in front of you – most of whom, you included, are really only gawping at it because of how much it’s worth.
Go here instead: Paris is one of the world’s great museum cities, so it feels a little unimaginative to plump for the museum everyone knows about. For real, jaw-dropping, wow-now-I’ve-seen-it-in-the-flesh reactions, try the Musée d’Orsay. Its collection is stuffed with Impressionist works by Monet, Manet and Cézanne so luminous they’ve gotta be saving on the lighting bill.
In the still-stylish Marais quarter, the Picasso Museum, recently reopened after a five-year renovation, compellingly traces the little Spaniard’s wild, abundant genius. And in the otherwise rather snoozy 16th district, all the cool kids gather at the zany modern art space the Palais de Tokyo.
Flickr: commpilot23 / Via Creative Commons
The Eiffel Tower
Why not? One drawback of the Eiffel tower, once you've braved the hours-long queues, swallowed the €15.50 (£11.50) ticket price and crammed yourselves into what feel like freight elevators to get to the top is that you can’t actually see the Eiffel Tower from the top. Which is the whole point of Paris, right?
Oh, and – unsurprisingly – once you’ve reached the top of this Paris landmark, there are equally long queues to get down, only now you’ve swapped your sense of thrilled expectation for vertigo mixed with misanthropy. The Eiffel Tower’s other main drawback? So many aggressive street vendors and pickpockets they should form their own guild.
Go here instead: For a less predictable view, climb the Tour Montparnasse – a very tall (for Paris) skyscraper that’s ugly enough you won’t be missing anything from the peak.
(None of which is to deny the Eiffel Tower’s status as an aesthetic and engineering marvel and symbol of modernity but just to point out that there are way better vantage points in Paris to appreciate those qualities .)
© Paris Tourist Office/Marc Bertrand
The Champs-Elysées
Why not? Gazing up at the leafy plane trees that still line this major avenue running from Place de la Concorde to the Arc De Triomphe, you can just about imagine the days when boater-hatted idle heirs, parasol-twirling ladies who lunched and peripatetic poets wandered up and down what was reputed to be the most beautiful thoroughfare on Earth.
But it would help if you were very shortsighted: that name, which actually means “heavenly”, is harder to justify now. The haute couture emporiums of Dior and Louis Vuitton may recall the street’s elitist past, but the international chains such as Gap and McDonald’s now jostling with cut-price clothing outlets and characterless cafes make this one of the least atmospheric parts of the city.
Go here instead: For the best shopping in Paris, go niche. You’ll find some of the city’s most distinctive and up-and-coming designers along Rue des Francs-Bourgeois and its offshoots in the Marais. For a more old-world experience, try the 19th-century covered passageways, such as Galerie Vivienne, in the second arrondissement.
In the eighth, Chanel, Valentino and Fendi are among the couture houses hustling genteelly along Avenue Montaigne, plus there’s Bulgari jewels to go with them.
Flickr: mckrista1976 / Via Creative Commons
http://ift.tt/1KpRLT5 Simon Busch
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