Submitted by Shawn Gaines on the 2018 summer session program in France and the Netherlands sponsored by the Department of English …
After Brussels, we headed to Caen and Paris in France. Caen was a relatively nice departure from all of the hustle and bustle of major cities like Amsterdam and Brussels. There were much fewer people on the sidewalks in Caen, and although Caen was fairly large it still had a small-town feel to it. In Caen, we went on excursions to Normandy and Mount St. Michel. The weather in Caen was also relatively nice. The humidity was low and the high temperature was usually in the mid to low 60s. This felt refreshing when compared to the high temperatures in Amsterdam and Brussels. After Caen, we went to Paris. In Paris, the crowds of people were by far the largest. The hotel rooms in Paris were by far the smallest, but that wasn’t much of a problem because we did not spend much time in the hotel. The first day in Paris, we got to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. In addition to the Eiffel Tower, we went to Versailles, Sacre Coeur, the Arc de Triomphe and Montmarte. We also went to Asterix Park which is an amusement park named after a popular French comic character Asterix de Gaulle. In the park, we got to ride on rides and buy souvenirs to take home. I was surprised by the amount of enthusiasm that the people of Paris had for soccer. Soccer is not that big in the United States compared to other sports.
