Paris

I haven't posted in the last week and a half because I was kept busy with work and a weekend away.

I went to Paris for the bank holiday weekend and came back on Tuesday night. Paris is a lovely city. I had been there before with work but never got the opportunity to do any touristy stuff and I grew to dislike the city though I now realise what I really disliked was the office park area outside Paris. Business travel may seem like a great thing but it really really sucks and you rarely get the opportunity to see anything of the place you are visiting unless you are able to stay over for a weekend.

I now understand why people love Paris. The whole city center is beautiful. Some cities have nice areas with a few beautiful buildings but Paris itself is beautiful. All the buildings blend together to create one distinctive look. The public transport system is second to none. London has a great underground but the Paris Metro is a huge web of metro stations bringing you to within a 5 minute walk of any location with trains every 3 minutes. Compare that to Dublin where we have two short tram lines that don't interlink and a bus system that's supposed to run every 15 minutes on some good routes but waits of 30 minutes for a bus to arrive at your stop are the standard.

I hope Paris gets the 2012 Olympics. London may be closer to Dublin, but I think I would much prefer to travel to Paris for some of the events.

(I should learn how to post photos to my blog)