By Chloe Martin
“Napoleon decreed on the 12th of February 1806 to build a triumphal arch on the place de l’Étoile” (p. 19, “Second Day Afternoon”).
The Arc de Triomphe, though a symbol of Paris (shoutout to my new Arc de Triomphe tray!), is not among the things I came to Paris with on my bucket list. Much like the Eiffel Tower, I think I just sort of assumed that I’d look down every street in Paris and have some sort of phenomenal view of the Arc, so it never seemed too important to seek it out. In the end, the thought of navigating the Champs-Élysées seemed like wayyyy too much of a headache, so I did not, in fact, ever seek it out; instead, I resigned myself very happily to the dust-filled partial view that I had of it from the Tuileries the one time I went. 
As the final days of the trip rolled around, though, I felt myself wanting to reach for the touristy things that I had skipped before, see the backdrops to the movies and TV shows that I’ve seen. And so, at the urging of an equally bored and curious student (shoutout to Colin U.), I went to the Arc de Triomphe.
Maybe it was because it was the end of the trip and I had seen so many amazing things up until this point, but unlike the Eiffel Tower, my reaction to seeing the Arc up close was just “huh, there it is.” As impressive (and surprisingly not crowded) as it was, my brain understood none of the magnitude that it did at standing at the base of literally any other significant French monument and instead, we focused only on the basics (“That’s a nice arch, wonder where they put the support to build it” –Colin).
I hadn’t originally planned on writing about the Arc de Triomphe, but then I stumbled across page 19 of the Guilmin Guide and I couldn’t help myself. Rather than any sort of flowery imagery or touristy elevator pitch about its magnitude, Guilmin stuck to strictly facts.* As seen in the quote above, we get like one sentence on the history, followed by one sentence on the height, followed by one sentence on the art. It’s almost comical how stark this description is compared to literally any of the others in this book.
Though I wouldn’t spend time seeing it again that close on purpose (and neither would Guilmin, it seems), I’m glad we decided to stop there in the moment. It gave me a really peaceful feeling of officially seeing everything I had any thought of seeing on this trip (which is suddenly a very sad feeling, but at least I didn’t miss anything).
**Okay, they use one descriptive word, but it’s “gigantic,” so it doesn’t really count.