The Five Senses: Paris (BDZ)

Although it still feels like I just arrived, it's now my third week in Paris, France!  So far the experience has been incredible, and I'm sure it will only get better with time.  As Crane wrote in "For a More Creative Brain, Travel", "new sounds, smells, language, tastes, sensations, and sights spark different synapses in the brain and may have the potential to revitalize the mind."  For only a few weeks spent here, I can already tell he is right.

First, I'll start with sights.  Being a city that was first inhabited over 2000 years ago, Paris is full of them.  In my first lecture of the semester, my literature class visited Montmartre, a neighborhood located in northern Paris.  Montmartre was known in the 19th and 20th centuries for being home to many artists and authors, including Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and Ernest Hemingway.  Located at the top of a hill overlooking the massive city, the "quartier" provided a great viewpoint to take in all of the sights that are Paris.

While there are an overwhelming amount of sights to take in, Paris is never short of sounds that make the city come to life.  Bustling with activity, these sounds are everywhere.  Walking down any given street, you can hear waiters calling to passing customers advertising their café, music coming from a nearby nightclub, traffic zipping through the crowded streets, and hundreds of conversations between Parisians passing by.  To me, one sound sticks out among them all, and that is the waning sirens of distant police cars.  Hearing this unmistakable sound in the street almost puts you in a scene from an international movie, far away from the reality surrounding you.

Touch is a very interesting sense in Paris.  The thing that sticks out the most to me in Paris are the cobblestone streets winding through the city, and walking on these streets you can feel the history beneath you.  Here on these same stones walked the likes of Victor Hugo, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Charles de Gaulle.  While it may be something not many notice, these "rues" definitely add to the identity of the city.

Paris is a city with many, many, many smells.  Nearly every street has a boulangerie, baking baguettes and specialty pastries fresh each morning.  This distinctive scent is intertwined with international cuisine being cooked in small restaurants right next to each other, providing for smells from around the world which seemingly change with every step you take.  Before a long day of classes, no scent is better than that of espresso in the morning from a favorite local café.

Taste.  France is renowned for possessing some of the best restaurants and cuisine throughout the world, and Paris is no exception.  Parisian patisseries make some of the best pastries and croissants, and each neighborhood within the city has hundreds of restaurants and cafés all competing for reputation and esteem.  However, who can resist the appeal of wine and cheese when in France? There are hundreds of different wines and cheeses produced within France's borders; hopefully I will try them all before my stay here is over.