So here's the thing about France...

First you fly into Spain. You eat their delicious food. You see their ginormous cathedrals. You see Palacio Real--the largest royal palace in Europe--you visit their art museums, the Prado, the Reina Sophia. You see the masterworks of Velasquez, Goya, Picasso. You're overwhelmed, in awe, respectful. Your trip is already worth it. You don't know how this can be topped.

And then you take the train to France.

You visit Versaille in all its opulence; and now Palacio Real, for all its size, looks merely charming, not magnificent--and that's before you deal with the massive gardens out back.

Musee d'Horsey makes the Reina Sophia (and that's the one with Guernica for cryin' out loud!) look simple, while the Lourve makes the Prado look small--though to be fair, everything's small compared to the Lourve, where you walk past hall after hall after hall after hall of masterpieces, and you don't even take a moment to pause at one before the next one grabs your attention.

You start to get frustrated, you start to get mad, there's just too much pretty to look at.

And that's before you reckon with the Eiffel Tower, the Arc d'Triumphe, Notre Dame, St-Chappelle--

A word on the latter two: you know something's messed up when St-Chappelle, with its floor-to-ceiling medieval stain-glass windows, is the other famous Church on the Ile de Cite--not just in Paris mind you, but just on the Ile de Cite. The other one. As in, the one you wonder over to after Notre Dame. A cathedral that would be a treasure in any other city in Europe is just that other Church you see, cause, you know, you might as well, cause you're already there.

This is when you start to get mad. They're makin' us look bad, you see.

You try to find things to nitpick--like how all their chefs take Mondays off. All of 'em. At once. Seriously, have they never heard of shifts in France? Even Taco Bell's at least mastered that.

You're tempted to complain that all there is to eat Mondays is fresh French bread and pastries--till you confess that you would actually be totally cool with eating their bread and pastries all day, they taste so fabulous.

Did you know that French is an actual language?! As in, there are in fact places on God's green earth where people say 'excuse-moi' or 'bonjour' not to sound pretentious or snooty--no, that's just how they say hi.

In some ways, finally visiting Paris is like finding out Narnia, or Middle-earth, actually exist; and that they speak Elvin on the subways there, and Minus Turreth is a real building, open to tourists, right in the heart of Metropolitan Rohan.

You start to wonder what the U.S. has to offer--I had this same thought in China, but remembered it in Europe: America is a brand new country. There are no old buildings save what we didn't wipe out of the Native Americans. We have no real history to speak of.

But then I realized--that is why a European would visit America. You go to any National Park in the US (and I live near several), and the one thing you're guaranteed to see, besides hoodoos, cargo shorts, and trees, is Europeans. They're dressed nicer, smell worst, and if they're speaking English, they're exclaiming, "Ah, I am now in the real America!" For that matter, the Chinese word for America--美国--does in fact signify a big, beautiful country, and thus by implication, a wild, untamed frontier.

That is, you go to Europe to experience history; you go to America to escape it.