Champs Élysées from the Arc de Triomphe

In the past few years I have travelled extensively throughout Europe and have enjoyed a great number of experiences that have shaped me into the person that I am. However one of the most memorable was travelling through Paris and experiencing the many aspects of the city that make it so unique. Through this course I have learned that the majority of these unique aspects came from the mind of Georges-Eugene Haussmann. Looking back I can vividly remember the wide, straight boulevards that emanated from a single location. One of the most distinct is the Champs-Elysées that emanates from the Arc de Triomphe. This boulevard emanating from a central location highlights every aspect of Haussmann’s modernization. It is quite wide with tall buildings lining the street that have almost identical facades. Also the street has many café’s and shops that made it seem very busy and not as historical as some areas of Paris. I was quite struck by this because before travelling to Paris I was staying just outside of Paris in a small community named Enghien Les-Bains where all the modernization of Paris was absent. In this town there were no wide boulevards, and instead there were narrow winding streets that made it very difficult to make your way around this relatively small town. I was amazed at how the efforts by Haussmann to modernize Paris had made such a significant impact on the character of the city. Instead of the jumbled narrow streets of small towns outside of Paris there were wide easily distinguishable roads that made navigating this massive city quite easy.