Recession, What Recession?

Our first full day in Paris, this thought hit me immediately upon arriving at Versailles. There were people everyfreakingwhere. At this point, I am fairly certain that everyone knows how I feel about a crowd, especially a crowd chock full of silly tourists. And, it didn't end there. The Louvre was insane, it completely challenged our ability to enjoy much of anything when people are constantly touching, bumping, being smelly, etc. The glut of tourists had a challenger in the unpleasant category in the form of filth. The underground train stops looked like 1950s bomb shelters that had been littered, defecated & literally, bombed (many were actually crumbling around us). The one example that really defines my emotions about this underground system was a homeless man, sleeping down there while bugs crawled on him. Ah, Paris, how truly romantic you are!
Despite the negatives, we did have some truly great experiences in Paris. The Musee d'Orsay & Musee d'Orangerie were both incredible, and posed a more manageable crowd base due to their less renowned status. Joe was amazed at how many Impressionist works the Orsay has from great names like Renoir, Monet, van Gogh, the list goes on and on. The space is amazing as well, a converted train station, now beautiful art museum. The Orangerie was similarly fabulous, 2 huge rooms of Monet Waterlilies paintings, arranged in circular form, as defined by Monet himself when he donated the paintings to the museum. There wasn't much else to see there though, so it was one of the quietest places we were (quiet being used relatively, of course). Joe also enjoyed the army museum & Napoleon's tomb (talk about ostentatious lil man). I napped a bit there, lots of walking & stairs, and our third museum of the day, so I had good reason.
We also really enjoyed going up to the top of the Arc d'Triomphe, which had great sights of the Eiffel Tower light show at night, the Champs, the city at night (darkness masks dirt pretty well too).
Couldn't really complain with the food either. Although, our top two meals are pictured, so I don't really know what else to say about that. It's been probably a solid 7 years since I've eaten a full steak, so I had to ask Joe "is steak supposed to be this chewy?" For the record, it's not. Just a cheap steak, although the pepper sauce & fries still made for a relatively enjoyable experience. I'm never going to be big on eating a huge hunk of meat with nothing else, but overall, I can't complain. Our Sunday brunch was lovely as well, a smart little organic English speaking cafe/bakery near the Sacre Couer (I read about it before we got to Paris & we had gone there the morning before to learn they don't start serving breakfast until 10. Ugh, so we'd trekked up there for a hearty breakfast on Saturday & all we could have were scones. Sunday may have made up for it though) Couldn't compare to some polish & cream cheese rolls, for sure, but it did the job.
Overall, it was a good weekend, not exactly a refreshing, relaxing experience, but we did learn some things about ourselves & our priorities going forward as far as traveling goes. And when Monday morning rolled around, we were possibly more excited to come home than we were to leave on the trip in the first place. We have gotten so spoiled by our small, clean, uncrowded Zurich....at the very least, Paris made us really appreciate our new home a whole lot more.