In 2006, I traveled with my mum to Paris for a weekend by Thalys. From The Netherlands it only take a few hours by train and you’re in the center of Paris.

In this first trip to Paris I visited in an enormous rush all the major sights. My mum still has not recovered from the speed in which I made her climb up the Notre Dame and then straight on to Jardin du Luxembourg. I do not even remember eating and drinking on this trip and I am sure we did it all on a run.

In retrospect, I should not have rushed through a city so close to my hometown. I would have told my young self that it’s better to enjoy everything rather than to see all major sights in one weekend. I would find out eight years later that when you stroll around Paris more leisurely you’ll enjoy the city much more.

The first sight was a quick sprint over the island with the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris and since I traveled to Paris as if I would never go again we also had to rush inside and up the Cathedral and then down again (all 387 steps). What I remember liking were the gargoyles designed to let the water run off the cathedral.

From there we ran to the Jardin du Luxembourg; where I took one of my best photos. The garden would have been so nice to relax and to have a little picnic. Luckily for me, it was quite rainy so we could run straight to the next sight…

.. which was the Panthéon. At this time they had the most random art exhibition inside. They had hung huge white sacks filled with some substance (I assume sand) from the ceiling and these were distributed all over the interior of the building. I have no clue why they would do this to a building where a lot of famous and influential people were laid to rest, among them Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Marie Curie and of course Alexandre Dumas.

Straight on to our next location, which was the Eiffel tower. We did not go all the way to the top because it was cloudy and my mum was not looking forward to riding all the way up a to her seemingly fragile construction. I, of course, rushed too much to take any good pictures, but if you haven’t seen a picture of the Eiffel tower you should be very, very ashamed.

After the pictureless tower visit, we made our way to what is actually my favorite building in Paris. Hotel des Invalides. The golden dome is not like anything I had seen before and even without the sun shining on it looks gorgeous from any location. We spotted it from the Tomb of Napoleon, from the Musée Rodin and from up close.

It looks strange seeing the same dome over and over in different pictures, but this is a game of Where’s Wally I would definitely like to play.

Another pictureless location was the Louvre. Back then I though a trip to the Louvre had to be done, only to see the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa. After literally racing through the building to see the tiny painting of Mona Lisa in a huge room and the not-so-special-after-all Venus de Milo, we raced out of the building again to the next sight. I would really like to revisit the Louvre. I think I missed beautiful paintings and sculptures just because I wanted to see the famous ones, which at the end of the day did not even excite me that much.

The last trip on the itinerary for the first day was a visit to the 20th arrondissement, to see the graves of two greats. Cimetière de Père Lachaise houses both Oscar Wilde (“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future“) and Jim Morrison (The Doors). As for the rest of this trip, I did not take enough time to really enjoy the surroundings of this beautiful cemetery so the only thing I took away from it were these two graves, another visit is definitely in order.

The last day we made our way into Montmartre, which I am not going to describe in detail. This whole first trip to Paris is embarrassing to me, and Montmartre pushes me over the limit. Suffice it to say, last year (2014) I actually went all around Sacre Coeur and checked all the little artist shops in the area. In 2006, I ran past Moulin Rouge and I had a quick glance at Sacre Coeur and that was it. I am embarrassed to tell you that I didn’t even know of the artist area surrounding the church *bows head in shame*.