Champs Elysées, Paris

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without a stroll down the most famous boulevard in Paris, the Champs Elysees. It may not be as elegant as it once was, you will find chain stores like Nike and Sephora, fast food joints like McDonald's and Quick Burger, but still, it's the Champs Elysees!

Start at the top end near the Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon's homage to himself, climb to the top for a cool view of the city's orderly system of boulevards and not too orderly traffic. Make your way through the throngs of tourists, you can stop by the Petit Palais, the permanent collection is free here and the architecture is stunning, and the Grand Palais. The end of the famous boulevard is Place de la Concorde where you will find the obelisk and the start of the Jardin des Tuileires.

I confess that I did eat at Quick Burger with a fussy teenager but otherwise I have not stopped along the way to eat or drink unless you count crepes from a sidewalk stand, you might want to check prices before you sit down at any of the cafes as this is the most expensive real estate in the city, I'm guessing that the cafe prices will also be the most expensive in the city.

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This runs from the Louvre, through the Place de La Concord to the Arc de Triumph.

It is certainly one of the main roads of Paris, and was origionally constructed as an avenue for the victorious French armies to return to Paris through in their glory.

It.s certainly imposing

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In one word I can tell you what's wrong with the Avenue des Champs-Élysées: cars.

This street is marketed as "the most beautiful avenue in the world", and it really is beautiful except for the fact that there is an ugly ten-lane highway running right down the middle. There are four lanes of moving motor traffic in each direction (moving or creeping, as the case may be, or accelerating wildly when the traffic lights change), plus two lanes of parked cars on either side.

If I have measured correctly, the entire avenue is about 67 meters wide. Of that width, roughly 25 meters in the middle is devoted to motor vehicles, with a 21-meter sidewalk for pedestrians on each side. There are no bicycle lanes, at least not yet (as of 2011), but the council has promised to install bicycle lanes in both directions by 2014.


While the current situation is unsatisfactory, to say the least, I keep reminding myself that for over half a century, from the late 1930s to the early 1990s, it was worse -- much worse, since nearly the entire width of the avenue was given over to cars.

By the 1970s, even car-loving conservative politicians couldn't help noticing that the character of the Champs-Élysées was changing. The grand hotels, luxury boutiques and elegant restaurants began to leave, being replaced by chain stores and fast-food joints.

So from 1991 to 1994 a sweeping rearrangement of the Champs-Élysées was carried out under the direction of the French architect and urbanist Bernard Huet (1932-2001).

Much of the construction work was coordinated by the engineering firm OGI (Omnium Général d'Ingénierie), which summarized the project as follows:

"The rearrangement of the Champs Élysées consisted of restoring the character of a promenade to an avenue which had become an immense open-air parking lot. To do this, the side roads were eliminated, a second row of trees was planted and the entire surface of the pedestrian area was re-paved in granite." (My translation.)

Planting a second row of trees may not sound like a huge project, especially since it was just a matter of replacing a row of trees that had been cut down in the 1930s to make room for cars, but in fact this turned out to be a long and very expensive project because in the meantime the dirt under the sidewalk had been replaced by a labyrinth of cables, water pipes, gas pipes, sewer pipes and tunnels, all of which had to be found and relocated.

Second photo: As you stroll along these wide granite-paved sidewalks today, it is hard to believe that for over half a century most of this surface was used for car parking. But it was.

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This theater is not on the famous Avenue des Champs-Élysées, but is several blocks from there near the Place de l'Alma on the right bank of the Seine. This is a very swanky district of Paris, in fact the whole neighborhood reeks of money.

Of all the opera venues I went to this was the one with the highest percentage of men wearing suits and ties, maybe 35 or 40 percent. These looked to be high-powered business types who had come directly from their air-conditioned offices in their air-conditioned chauffer-driven automobiles. But the theater itself was not adequately air-conditioned, so it was amusing to watch some of these chaps (not all) finally give in and start taking off their jackets and loosening their ties.

The theater is unusual in that it is only 93 years old, having been built in 1913. It is said to be one of the few major examples of Art Nouveau in Paris. The stage is small and has little in the way of fancy machinery, so to change sets that have to lower the curtain and play a scene or two in front of it while armies (evidently) of stage hands change everything around by muscle-power, not without all the old-timey thumping and thudding sounds that you don't hear any longer in modernized theaters where everything is done by hydraulics or electricity.

Second photo: Looking up at the façade.

Third photo: Looking southwest along the Avenue Montaigne past the entrance to the theater.

Fourth photo: Stage entrance.

Fifth photo: Opps, there's only one man wearing a suit and tie in this photo. So you'll have to take my word for it that there were more inside.

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The opera I saw at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was Mozart's Don Giovanni, and it was a festival of voices with world-class singers including Lucio Gallo and Anna Bonitatibus, both of who have given gala performances in Frankfurt, and Patricia Ciofi, whom I had seen on television but never live.

The setting in this production was a somewhat seedy little seaside town in present-day Spain or Italy, with Don Giovanni as a somewhat pimpish local potentate. What really impressed me was the ending, in which stage director Andre Engel managed to combine the last two scenes (I've never seen that done before). And after all these many years (this opera is 219 years old, after all) he even came up with a surprise ending.

Shall I tell you what it is? After the final jubilation chorus about how he got what was coming to him, Don Giovanni emerged unscathed from the flames, dusted off his dapper three-piece suit and stood there with a triumphant smirk on his face as the curtain fell.

Second and third photos: The audience in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.

Fourth photo: View at night from the Place de l'Alma, just a short ways from the theater.

DES CHAMPS-ELYSEES is a long road, walking from the Arc De Triomphe to the Louvre was a loooooong walk, but a nice one never the least. I was just anxious about getting to the Louvre...which was closed anyways, but thats a different story.

Did u know that if u are walking down from the Arc De Triomphe towards the Louvre. on your left hand side there is a Mcdonalds with white arches. i been told its the only one in the world with white arches. Just thought i would throw that in.

Make sure u are wearing your walking shoes, and have a few platinum credit cards on hand if u are planning to do any shopping... This avenue is so bling bling, that it has its own website. If u would like to visit the website, click on the following link DES CHAMPS-ELYSEES

*Please feel free to rate this tip, or any of my other tips. I am always looking to improve them. Thank u...

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Admittedly highly specialised, and something hardly obvious for the Champs Elysees, are the car show rooms of Citroen, Renault and Peugot. I'm not a car nut but there's something fascinating about the 3 showrooms spread over the last kilometre or so prior to reaching Arc de Triomphe (when heading from the direction of the Louvre).

But they're not showrooms in terms of displaying 30 variations of 5 latest models. They're showpiece showrooms - and they're as much about the history of the 3 companies as well as the future more than the present. So check out cars of 70-100 years ago through to those that may be on our roads in 10 years time.

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Champs Elysées is one of the most famous avenues in the world.

It starts from Arc de Triomphe at "Charles de Gaulle-Etoile" ends down after 2.2km at Place de la Concorde the largest square of Paris.

Along the avenue you can find some expensive stores (Louis Vuiton, Prada, Cartier etc) full of luxury products which are nice for window shopping only. There are also a lot of cafes and restaurants too (and yes, most of them have ridiculous high prices)

What I liked most was the wide sidewalks with the long tree lines. Don’t forget that Champs Elysees were built with wide sidewalks for the rich people that were showing off here during the Belle Époque at the end of 19th century.

In our days this is the avenue where the official parades take place