PARIS - Roadside plaques are all that delineate national borders within the EU. Thus, we were in France for about an hour before I realized we had left Belgium. This was two Saturdays ago, and I was on a bus with the 70 other exchange students and who had signed up for the Rotary-organized trip to Paris.

In fairness to myself, the French countryside looks an awful like that of its smaller northern neighbor. Small hamlets and tidy stands of forest punctuate rolling fields of green and gold. The Thalys train (“Brussels to Paris in less than two hours!”) zipped alongside the highway. The late October sun shone brightly, belying the crisp, invigorating chill that hung in the air.

It had been a cold, early morning. I had risen at the ripe hour of 5:30 to get to the meeting point in time, but the atmosphere on the bus was festive. With 70 exchange students on the same bus bound for Paris, it could not be otherwise. Our excitement hit a crescendo when someone spotted the Eiffel Tower out the left-hand windows. Our scrambled excitement was merely a pickup note. Indeed, the festivities would only increase over the next three days.

Our first destination was the Chateaux Versailles. The palace itself sits on a small rise overlooking a vast cobblestone courtyard on one side and the royal gardens on the other. We dismounted the bus and approached the palace from the courtyard side, gazing up through the gilded metal gates to the hulking stone walls beyond. Few human creations can compare to the sheer grandeur and stunning opulence of this estate. I think that was the purpose.

We roamed in small groups throughout the palace, exploring the Hall of Mirrors, the royal bedchambers, and numerous other fantastically opulent rooms. The Versailles gardens were as stunning as the palace itself. White marble statues littered the impeccably manicured grounds, and countless golden fountains spit water into the chilly air.

Touring Versailles helped me find context for the tsarist palaces I had visited earlier this summer with my family. Peter the Great must have been awed by the enormity and decadence of Versailles just as we were. If you were in the market for examples of a powerful, modern, and fantastically rich monarchy, as Peter the Great was at the time, then Versailles was certainly the place to look.

However, I felt a thinly veiled beast lurking behind the opulent halls and perfectly symmetrical gardens. Recalling the desperate squalor of the French peasantry at the time portrayed in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, it was all too easy to sense the bloodthirsty hatred of the French Revolution.

Luckily, light bulbs are all that lurk within the Eiffel Tower, which we found ourselves gawking at later that night. The iconic tower is lit brilliantly from within like a golden fang surging into the dark sky.

That evening we had the incredible fortune to view the tower, and countless other Parisian landmarks, from a night cruise on the Seine. It was bitterly cold, but most of us still opted for the outside section of the boat. We huddled in groups, talking in several languages, laughing in one, and watching the City of Lights slipping quietly past.

The boat ride was just one of many spectacular events that Rotary had lined up for us. The second day took us on a mad sprint from the Eiffel Tower to the Musée d'Orsay to the Hard Rock Café to Montmartre to the Champs Elysées and back again to the Eiffel Tower that evening. This time, we were here to do more than watch it glow.

The elevator that rises through the tower's leg to the first level is just rickety enough to be unnerving. However, my nerves were swept away as we stepped out onto the viewing platform of the first level. We had climbed less than a quarter of the way up the tower's considerable height, but had already risen well above the city. A glittering urban sea spread out beneath us and seemed to touch the horizon in every direction. It was surreal to stand on the Eiffel Tower, looking out into the clear, cold night.

Surreality gave way to sheer incredulity as we emerged onto the very top of the tower. We were high above the city, and it felt higher still at night. Paris spread out beneath us like a black carpet pinpricked with glittering lights. Brilliantly illuminated riverboats cruised the jet-black ribbon of the Seine like crocodiles. The Arc de Triomphe, now the size of a Lego block, stood out boldly from the jumbled quilt of darkness and light. The tower's powerful searchlights cut through the empty sky to pry at the city below. Paris was muted. The only sound up here was wind whipping furiously against metal.

Paris is an incredible city, and I had the great fortune to visit some of its many treasures. The day after the Eiffel Tower we visited the Louvre where we saw the Mona Lisa, among other works; then Notre Dame. Every thing and place we visited was fantastic and awe-inspiring in its own right. But it was the company, the smiling presence of my fellow exchange students, that transformed "Beautiful Tourist Visit" into "Quite Possibly the Three Most Fantastic Days of my Life." For those who have seen the film "Spinal Tap," they turned the volume dial up to eleven.

Time and time again I was struck by the ability of our exchange student group to be one moment silly, joyful, and a little rambunctious, and the next in deep discussion over our preferred works from Van Gogh’s oeuvre, the beauty of a gothic church, or the simple wonder of our surroundings. Through fun and silly, somber and attentive, respect is universal and inquisitiveness abounds. I am honored to count myself as part of this group of incredible individuals. It was a joy to spend three full days surrounded by their smiles. Paris wasn't all that bad, either.

Ari Snider is a high school junior from Belfast studying abroad in Belgium through Rotary International. He currently lives with a host family in Waterloo, not far from Brussels. His discoveries and adventures abroad have been the subject of his blog Belfast/Belgique, which he has graciously allowed us to post here.