Fact or Fiction – A rundown on Parisian preconceptions

Paris.

Reams and reams have been written on all this city has to offer. Before I left for Paris I heard a lot of mixed reviews. People seemed to either love or hate Paris.

For some reason Paris had never been on my radar. Maybe it was all the reports from good friends or maybe it is the anti-romantic in me. I knew I would visit Paris someday but it languished somewhere at the bottom of my priority list.

Our goal for these past Eid holidays was to get to Amsterdam. But our plans changed spontaneously when we found relatively cheap tickets to Paris.  Before I knew it, we somehow settled on 4 nights in Paris, a night in Brussels and 3 nights in Amsterdam before returning to Paris to fly back home.

Those close to me will remember my utter dread, yes dread! at the thought of visiting Paris. The internet was flooded with accounts of massive crowds and 2 hour long queues at attractions. To make matters worse we were visiting in high season during the Euro 2016 finals week! I resigned myself to the fact that we would spend all our time waiting in queues in a messy, crowded, old city.

But Paris took me completely by surprise.