In September 1996, I spent a couple of weeks in South Benfleet, Essex, England with my mother visiting her pen pal and family. From there, I took a long weekend and went over to Paris on the Eurostar train. The trip from London to Paris takes three hours as the train passes through the Channel Tunnel, a marvel of engineering that passes under the English Channel from Cheriton, England (near Folkestone) to Coquelles, France (near Calais). The $15 billion Channel Tunnel makes the old dream of a ground link between Great Britain and continental Europe a reality for the first time since the Ice Ages. One of Europe's biggest infrastructure projects to date, the tunnel consists of 3 interconnected tubes: 1 rail track each way plus 1 service tunnel. Its total length is 31 miles, of which 23 miles are underwater, and its average depth is 150 feet under the seabed. The Eurostar is only in the tunnel itself for 20 minutes, and once the train stops at Calais-Fréthun after emerging from the tunnel, it reaches a maximum cruising speed of 186 mph as it shoots through Picardie in the north of France toward Paris and the Île-de-France. The ride is so smooth, though, that you never realize that you're traveling that fast.

With a limited amount of time, I wanted to see as much as I could in Paris. Though I'd spent a few days there in 1985 after a semester of studying in Salamanca, Spain, I felt that I'd barely scratched the surface. There is so much to see and do that one hardly knows where to begin. The Louvre was definitely on my agenda as it had been closed due to a strike the first time that I visited Paris. After waiting in line for over an hour at the Tourist Office in Gare du Nord, an agent managed to get me a room at the Hôtel du Brabant (http://hotelbrabant.free.fr/) that was only a few blocks from the station and centrally located, so I was off and running.

I have tried to select some of my best photos to give you (the reader) an overall view of the wonderful sights of Paris. A weekend is certainly not enough time to see much of what the city has to offer, but you can see a good bit with a good map, a little planning, and a Métro pass in hand (http://www.ratp.info/informer/anglais/index.php). Bon voyage!