There are both advantages and disadvantages to being seventeen years old in Paris. Bad news: you’re still not an adult, and it is harder to get into clubs. Good news: basically every cultural event or exposition is, as they say, “gratuit!” This goes without saying, but as a poor student bearing the brunt of a fluctuating American dollar, free was my favorite price.

The first museum I went to was the Musée du Louvre. The exterior, including the pyramids, were as beautiful as most of the works of art inside. I found that the Louvre was a nice destination, but there is no way to take it all in during one visit. In fact, it was so overwhelmingly large that I basically took the “tourist route” to see the major famous works inside, missing thousands and thousands of other pieces. This museum had more wings than a flock of birds. For being so large, one would think it might be less packed, but that is simply not the case. In the room holding the Mona Lisa (which was unexpectedly small, might I add), I wasn’t even able to get within fifteen feet of it.

I had a much more pleasant experience at the smaller Musée Rodin. Going to this museum was a random occurrence. I just sort of stumbled across it in passing and decided to check it out. I didn’t realize that, although I didn’t know Rodin, I knew a few of his works including “The Thinker” and “The Gates of Hell.” The museum was a renovated estate, and it included hundreds of beautiful sculptures and paintings along with a beautiful garden and a perfectly manicured lawn. There was even a work of Van Gogh which was a pleasant surprise.

Besides museums, I was also able to attend a jazz festival, movies, student clubs, concerts, and other events for free or for a reduced price. In fact, on three occasions I saw a movie in theaters for one euro. Being a legal minor allowed me the freedom to go to things I wanted to while letting me stretch my euro to the max.

As for my other sightseeing adventures, I could probably fill an entire newspaper describing those. For brevity’s sake, I will just say that the monuments, churches, parks, and other famous places that we’ve all seen in pictures are infinitely more impressive in person. There is one other extravagant spectacle that I experienced which requires and deserves its own article: July 14th, Bastille Day.