A diary of my trip to France to see Metallica’s M72 World Tour in May 2023

May 15, 2023

Since this is 2023 and we were flying United, our scheduled 6:30 PM departure turned out to be a 12:15 AM departure out of Newark Liberty Airport. Our original flight was cancelled, and the replacement flight was delayed numerous times. I guess this type of fun is what I was missing all the years I spent not flying to Europe.

May 16, 2023

We landed about six and a half hours later than originally planned. Susan arranged for a pickup at the airport and notified the dispatcher about the cancelled flight and the delayed replacement flight before we took off. We landed and she got a note saying that they cancelled the ride because we didn’t show up. So, we stood in the “ham and egger” taxi line and hopped a cab to the hotel. The first thing I noticed about Paris is that they sure do love their graffiti. It’s everywhere, on the walls along the highway, on the box trucks, and on street signs.

We rolled up to the hotel in Montmartre and our room was not ready, so we headed into town. First off, I needed to kill my jet lag, so I started off with my trusty cure.

We wandered into Cimetière de Montmartre. The second thing I noticed about Paris is that they like their mausoleums.

After checking into the hotel, we set off for dinner at Le Dôme on the Metro. The stations in the Metro do not smell nearly as bad as the stations in the New York City subway. I ordered the monkfish and the third thing I noticed about Paris, and this was not a surprise at all, is that the food is awesome.

We walked from the restaurant towards Notre Dame through Jardin Du Luxembourg. It reminded me of a smaller version of Central Park. Notre Dame is still being rehabilitated from damage from a devastating 2019 fire so we could not get very close but could see where the fire had badly damaged the structure.

Across the street, we stopped at La Crème de Paris for dessert. I grabbed a honey crepe and officially ate too much on my first day in Paris.

At about this point, bone-crushing jet lag set in, so we headed back to the hotel in an Uber. I needed to be at the top of my game for Wednesday, the night of the first Metallica concert!

May 17, 2023

I woke up ready to rock for the most important day of the year so far, my first Metallica concert since August 2022!

Our hotel gave us a walking tour guide of the surrounding area of Montmartre. One of the stops was a restaurant called Hardware Society, so we stopped there for breakfast.

After breakfast, we took a short walk to Sacre Coeur and the Montmartre overlook. This was my first view of what Paris looked like, sprawling and full of buildings that were only a few stories high. I was not expecting the terrain to be so hilly.

We walked to the Metallica pop up store at Crémerie de Paris. I wanted to beat the lines at the concert by buying my t-shirts there, but there turned out to be a long line to get in anyway.

Along the walk to the Metallica pop up store, I was taken aback by how many cafes and restaurants there are in Paris. I wondered at first how they all stayed in business, but throughout the trip noticed how full and bustling they all seemed to be.

With our Metallica merchandise in hand, we took the Metro to the Eiffel Tower. Our tickets included a glass of Moet at the top floor.

The Tower offered an even grander view of Paris than the Montmartre overlook. The streets are laid out in a chaotic and maze-like fashion, and the sprawl is even more evident than my first vantage point.

On the way out, we walked down the stairs from the “2^nd floor”. I found out the hard way that the 2^nd floor is much higher than two stories, and it was a dizzying descent down a long spiral staircase.

We went back to the hotel for a quick power nap and to get gussied up for Metallica! We grabbed a quick dinner nearby at La Sancerre. It was my first time eating French Onion Soup in France!

We used Google maps to plot a course to the show at Stade de France in Saint-Denis. It told us to take the Metro to a bus stop to connect there to a bus that went to the stadium. This turned out to be a huge mistake. Our bus did not show and there appeared to be angry commuters walking away in disgust. There was a lot of construction and traffic in the area, and we were confused about what to do. None of the buses that came were the bus we wanted, and the clock was ticking, we had to get there!

Walking didn’t seem to be a good idea; it would take about 45 minutes, which we didn’t have. We tried an Uber, but it looked like it drove past us and was stuck in traffic and wouldn’t arrive for 20 minutes. We tried hailing several taxis to no avail (we couldn’t figure out their red light/green light/no light system) until one finally waived us in, apparently somewhat begrudgingly. I expected to get stuck in traffic as we approached the stadium, but it took about five minutes for him to drop us off right outside. Crisis averted; we were there on time.

This was my first time in a stadium outside of the US. I read that it previously had hosted international events including World Cup Soccer. But it looked to be very bare bones to me, missing a lot of the amenities that standard NFL stadiums have. The lettering and numbering convention for their seating sections was confusing. I stopped to ask an usher where our seats were. He looked at my ticket and shrugged his shoulders and told us he did not know. It turned out we were only one section over from where he was stationed.

Our seats were in the lower bowl in the 16^th row. I normally like getting general admission tickets for Metallica so I can get close, but I had a Ticketmaster snafu and accidentally bought seated tickets. This tour is the first time that Metallica featured a stage in the round in a stadium, normally that practice is reserved for arenas. There were six lighting and sound towers that surround the stage and one of them partially obstructed our view, but not to the point that we would miss any substantial part of the show.

We sat down 20 minutes before the show. The anticipation was building despite the continued sunshine. At this time of year, sunset in Paris is well after the normal start time for Metallica at around 8:45 PM. With all the exhaustion from the travel to Paris, and the transit debacle getting to the stadium, I barely had time for it to sink in that I was about to live a life-long dream to see Metallica in Paris! It hit me like a ton of bricks when the loudspeaker blared AC/DC’s “Long Way to The Top”, the traditional cue that a Metallica concert is about to start. We were minutes away and I thought my head was going to explode!

At the commencement of the recorded music to cue the show, Metallica took the stage to a thunderous reception from the crowd. They tore into “For Whom the Bell Tolls”. James Hetfield started jumping up and down to fire up the crowd and the audience sang every word.

Fifteen songs followed, and they were a mix of classics, rare cuts, and new songs from their recently released album “72 Seasons”. I was excited to hear “I Disappear” for the first time in years. It was the first time I got to see any of the new songs performed live. “Lux Æterna” was an instant heavy metal anthem. I enjoyed the three songs they played from their greatest album of all, the eponymously named “Metallica”. “Holier Than Thou” always fires me up. The band took delight in playing the instrumental “Orion”, their excitement was evidenced in their body language.

The centered stage let Metallica connect with the crowd in a way that they couldn’t do from their normal end stage setup at stadiums. James, Kirk Hammett, and Robert Trujillo circled the stage throughout the show. Lars Ulrich’s drum kit was relocated to different sections of the stage throughout the show and rotated in each spot, so the audience had many different vantage points for his playing. The band played to all sections of the stadium, including fans in the Snake Pit in the center of the doughnut-shaped stage.

The frenzied set concluded with “Master of Puppets”, which is critically accepted as one of the most important heavy metal songs in the history of the genre. Fireworks were displayed on the big screens on top of the lighting towers. I thought that was odd, I’m used to actual fireworks at Metallica shows, I wonder if they just didn’t have a pyrotechnic permit for the show in Paris.

Usually, the end of a Metallica show is bitter-sweet because it is over, but this one was different. Due to the nature of the M72 World Tour, they were going to play a second show in less than 48 hours with a completely different set list. I was able to leave happy both from satisfaction from the show I had just seen and anticipation for the second one.

We followed the crowd to a train station that was fifteen-minute walk away from the stadium. I guess city planners didn’t think it was important to build a stadium near a train station. We made our way back to Pigalle for a nightcap. This section of Paris was especially lively for a Wednesday night. A few glasses of wine later, we walked back to our hotel completely exhausted.

May 18, 2023

The day started with a breakfast of pain au chocolate from a local bakery. That was one of my objectives, to have pain au chocolate as much as I could in France. Our first destination was the Musée du Louvre. The Louvre started off as a palace for kings outside of the busy section of the city, so it is obscenely large. So large in fact, that it is hard to make sense of some parts of the visitor map. We managed to figure out the route to the Mona Lisa, observing the art collection along the way.

A lot of the art in the Louvre was stolen from French conquests, but in recent years was purchased or collected from donations. It gave me an appreciation for their history and dedication to the arts. I’m not an art critic by any means, but it was interesting to see the conflation of pieces inspired by mythologies, Catholic teachings, and important historical figures.

Next up was a wine tasting at Les Caves Du Louvre. It used to be the wine cellar for the Louvre. Some of the cellar tunnels were cut off for construction of the Metro. It was privately bought and turned into a wine shop that hosts tours. The ceilings were very low, even for someone of my stature.

We walked along the Seine and back to our hotel, about an hour away. The endless cafes were jammed, and people were out and about on a late spring day.

After a quick stop at the hotel, we went to dinner at La Boîte Aux Lettres. I grabbed a steak with smashed potatoes and cheese, it was fantastic. Susan rolled with a piece of fish and gave her meal high marks, too.

After dinner we went to see Moulin Rouge. We were prohibited from taking pictures of the show (probably because of the gratuitous nudity) which is too bad because it was quite an interesting experience. I’ve only been to a few Broadway musicals in my lifetime and sat there in agony throughout most of them. But I really enjoyed the Moulin Rouge cabaret, and it wasn’t just because of the nudity. It was an impressive production and featured some incredibly athletic performances and a fascinating contortionist. Maybe being in a different language helped, too. I couldn’t complain about the lyrics since I didn’t understand them.

Overall, visiting the Louvre Museum and the Moulin Rouge was quite a contrast to the previous day’s Metallica-centric activities.

May 19, 2023

I woke up ready to rock for the most important day of the year so far, my first Metallica concert since Wednesday!

We started the day with breakfast at the Breizh Café with both savory and sweet crepes. Why not have your first dessert of the day at breakfast?

Next up, we took the Metro to Le Catacombs for a tour. This was a wild experience, like nothing I had seen before.

The catacombs were originally a limestone mine underneath the entire city of Paris. Somehow their collective society forgot about the tunnels it left behind as they began to build throughout the city. The tunnels were structurally unsound so houses or even entire streets would sink into the ground. The catastrophe made its way to the king who did nothing at first but finally asked an architect to check out what was happening. They were startled to find the massive tunnels and set about stabilizing them to prevent further damage to the city.

Years later, cemeteries and hospitals were overflowing with carcasses from massive waves of death from diseases like the plague and syphilis. The reigning king ordered the bodies to be dumped in the mine tunnels, thus turning them into catacombs. Millions of bodies were disposed of in the catacombs in the following years, many of them in aesthetically pleasing patterns of femurs and skulls, with the rest of the bones piled up behind them.

The tour allowed us to walk among the bones throughout a small section of the tunnels. There were an unimaginable number of them throughout our walk. I found it to be paradoxically eerie and humorous. I took a lot of pictures.

This was a great way to prepare for a heavy metal concert: with skulls, bones, disease, despair, and death!

After the tour we stopped at La Mabillon for a drink, and I got a Tiki Toi. The name reminded me of one of my favorite drinks at the Jersey Shore, the Tiki Tea. This one was very different.

I stopped for a quick dinner at Le Nazir and ordered the burger with fries. I forgot they serve fries with mayonnaise in France.

We changed our plan of attack to get to the stadium, reversing the route we took to get back from the Wednesday show on the Metro. That worked out well to get us there, but the biggest annoyance of our trip stuck upon our arrival at the station. On our way towards the exit, we were stopped by security who asked to see our tickets. We were told we then had to talk to someone who appeared to be some sort of transit officer. She told us we bought the wrong priced tickets and had to pay a EUR 30 fine on the spot! My first inclination was to start screaming and cursing at her, but instincts kicked in right away. I didn’t want to spend the night in a French prison instead of watching Metallica. Incredulously, I paid the fine with my credit card and we headed towards the stadium.

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why our ticket at that price let us get through the turnstiles the previous night. Later, I checked into it, and we were exactly 1 EUR short on each ticket. I would have gladly paid the extra Euro had I known. Anyway, we chalked it up to France needing a way to keep government employees employed.

This time we had more time before the show to check out the stadium. Susan hadn’t had a chance to get dinner with me, so she tried to get a sandwich at the only concession stand anywhere near us. They said they were out of sandwiches, so she had to eat stale popcorn for dinner. They had only one beer to choose from, Heineken. What kind of stadium only serves one kind of beer? Especially something as awful as Heineken?

The bathrooms were woefully inadequate, they were far from the stands and undersized. They had no hand driers or paper towels, everyone just either didn’t wash their hands or walked out with them soaking wet.

Stade de France totally sucks. I don’t recommend attending an event there just to say you did. Only go for something important like Metallica.

None of that was going to deter me from having a blast. The standard canned audio to start the show hit the speakers and the crowd heated up. It looked like there were more people there, maybe because the show was on a Friday.

Metallica hit the stage and started with my favorite Metallica song, “Creeping Death!”. I was in absolute heaven, screaming along with the “Die! Die! Die!” chant coming from the frenzied crowd.

Just like on Wednesday, Metallica played a total of sixteen career-spanning songs, each one of which was an absolute delight. I really enjoyed seeing “If Darkness Had a Son” for the first time, the “temptation” chant it incurs from the crowd is intense. They played another instrumental, “The Call of Ktulu” from their second album. The set finished with blistering renditions of “One” and “Enter Sandman”.

These two concerts made the entire trip worth it. The members of Metallica have more money than they will ever need, and they are in their early sixties, around the age when many people start to think about retirement, especially those who are ultra-wealthy. But Metallica is soldering on, making new music and playing huge stadiums around the world. They have slowed down their touring pace considerably (this entire tour is only 25 shows over the course of two years), but they attack the shows with the same intensity they had when they started the band in the early eighties.

James told the crowd on both nights that they consider playing in front of crowds to be their purpose. The joy and excitement they play with cannot be faked; they clearly take pride in performing at the highest level of their lives.

This time the end of the show was indeed bittersweet. I was thoroughly satisfied with both unique sets and happy that I was able to live a dream of seeing Metallica play in France. But I was bummed that the Metallica part of the trip was over, and I must wait until August to see them again in East Rutherford.

We bought the properly priced tickets for the Metro and headed back to Pigalle for a few drinks and a late-night snack before calling it a night.

May 20, 2023

We didn’t have much of an agenda for Saturday, so we started with breakfast at Marcel. We took the Metro to the Seine River for a riverboat tour hosted by Bateau Mouches. The narration was hard to follow because it was in about six different languages, and I kept zoning out before they got to the English portions. But it was a lot of fun and the views of the city from the boat were cool.

After the tour was over, we walked to Champs-Élysées. Other than the monuments at each end of the street, there didn’t seem to be much uniquely French to the area. It was a shopping destination full of global brands that I can shop at home. I have a Foot Locker at my local mall, I didn’t feel the need to stop into theirs.

We took the Metro back to the hotel, and I ran down the hill to get a bite to eat. I heard a commotion and there was a protest headed my way. Prior to the trip, I had seen in the news that there were protests in French cities regarding a proposal from the government to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. I couldn’t quite tell, but I think that was what the protest I saw was about.

Unlike the news clips I had seen at home, this one wasn’t dangerous looking. There were some senior citizens with makeshift drums and a megaphone singing a song. They were surrounded by dozens of cops in riot gear. The police presence seemed excessive, but I guess it was best they over prepared.

After avoiding catastrophic injuries due to the “riots” we ditched that part of town and went to Rue Montorgueil for the night. Rue Montorgueil is another Parisian walking street with lots of open restaurants and bars with outdoor seating. We settled on Le Compas on for dinner. I went with the pasta and Susan ordered tuna and it was another fantastic meal.

We stayed in the area and bar hopped for the rest of the night. Let’s just say that the locals sure know how to live it up.

May 21, 2023

Sunday was our day to plan to leave Paris to visit the Champagne region of France. Originally, we were going to rent a motorcycle and head out this way, but logistics got in the way of easily making this happen, so we took the high-speed train there. The trains connecting the cities in France are insanely fast, I can’t think of a form of land transportation I have used in the states that moved this quickly. It only took about 45 minutes to make it to Reims.

We walked into town from the train station and this city has a much different vibe than Paris. I’m not sure if it was because we were there on a Sunday or because that’s how it always is, but compared to Paris, it was not very lively at all. There is a large pedestrian walkway in the center of town, and a big park nearby, but not many people were out and about, and we couldn’t find much to do.

We found another Notre Dame cathedral, like the rest of their cathedrals, it was insanely ornate and huge.

After checking into our hotel, we walked to GH Mumm for our scheduled activity for the day, a tour of their historic champagne making facilities. Mumm has a history of using sophisticated techniques for harvesting and pressing grapes. We learned how sediment is removed from champagne in a process called riddling.

The underground tunnel system for their cellars is incredibly long. I think our tour guide used the number of four kilometers in total. Susan noted how much of our trip was spent underground considering the Louvre wine cellars, the catacombs, the Metro, and now the GH Mumm cellars.

Mumm seems to be especially proud of the research and development they’ve done on the first champagne that can be enjoyed in space. They are waiting for approval from the French Space Agency to start including their bottles on space flights.

Following the tour, we grabbed a simple dinner at one of the only restaurants that was open. I’d say that the Mumm tour was very cool, but other than that, there’s not much to see in Reims as a tourist.

May 22, 2023

We woke up and got back on the train to Paris and checked into a new hotel. Today was supposed to be the full day we would have been on the Harley, but since that didn’t work out, we winged a new plan. A lot of tourist attractions in Paris are closed on Mondays so we settled on the modern art museum Centre Pompidou.

We started upstairs at Restaurant Georges for lunch, and I ordered the croque monsieur.

The view from the rooftop outside the restaurant was cool.

We walked through most of the galleries to check out the current exhibits. The most interesting one to me was the Norman Foster exhibit, he is a world-renowned architect with a portfolio spanning 50 years.

The art on display there was expectedly different from what was on display at the Louvre. The contrast in modern art to the classical pieces is very pronounced. It was certainly less centered around mythology and religion. But it is all representative of Paris’ continued dedication to the arts.

Dinner that night was at L’Aller Retour. I ordered steak frites with mashed carrots. I sure had a lot of beef on this trip.

May 23, 2023

This was the third biggest day of the trip, behind only the two Metallica days. Part of my original dream to see Metallica in Paris included renting a Harley and riding it around wine country. Tuesday was the day to seal the deal.

After I failed to locate a suitable bike using my paid Harley Owners Group membership, Susan managed to easily find one by contacting ATS Harley-Davidson Paris Bastille. I’m not sure why HOG didn’t make it that simple for me, but I’m glad she just googled it and figured it out.

We reserved a Road King for 9 AM for when they opened. We woke up and headed straight there to maximize the time on the road. They had the bike waiting for us outside the dealership. After signing off all the paperwork, we got on the bike and headed off. We had until 7 PM that day to get the bike back.

My normal bike that I’ve owned since 2007 is a Fat Boy. Harley has changed a lot of things since then, and the Road King is a bigger bike than my Fat Boy. It has a hydraulic clutch, a windshield, a bigger engine, and a six-speed transmission (mine is a five-speed). Additionally, my bike has a mount on the handlebars to use my phone as a GPS, but the Road King didn’t have the mount, so I was riding blind in a strange land. Even worse is that everything is in kilometers, there is a toll system I don’t understand, and all the road signs are in French.

All told, this added a great degree of difficulty for me. But with Susan’s help navigating from the back seat, and my exceptional riding talent and experience, we made it work. We rode through the craziness of the Paris city traffic and made it to the A4 highway.

The further we got from the city, the less traffic there was, and the scenery got better and better. We exited the A4 in the Champagne region and found signs for a Champagne trail through a series of vineyards. We made our way into Epernay and stopped for lunch. We walked to the Moet headquarters to take a few pictures and got back on the bike.

We improvised a route from there, heading north and west through Parc naturel régional de la Montagne de Reims. There were vineyards everywhere and the scenery was stunning.

From there, we wandered west and south, improvising a route through small towns and farmlands. We passed a lot of old homes and champagne houses. There were signs for WWII memorials, and even a sign for a US Memorial Day celebration. We kept this up until it was time to get back on the A4 to get the bike back to Paris by 7 PM.

The ride was exactly how I imagined it and I was impressed that we were able to improvise a ride without a GPS in a foreign land. It was the culmination of a dream come true vacation.

We timed it perfectly, getting the bike back to the dealer with about 25 minutes to spare. They checked it over, decided I didn’t do any damage to it and refunded my EUR 2,500 security deposit!

I noticed that the dealership windows were smashed with a blunt object. I asked about it and was told that the protestors had targeted them for some reason.

We went back to the hotel to get dressed for one last dinner. We went back to Rue Montorgueil for a late reservation at L’Escargot. Of course, we ordered the snails!

My last dinner in Paris was duck confit, and it was so good.

That was it for France, we woke up early the next morning, went straight to the airport and had an uneventful flight back home to New Jersey. I spent the time on the flight reflecting on this trip and writing most of this blog.

I got everything I wanted out of this trip and then some. I got to see the greatest band of all time play two concerts, I got to ride a Harley around wine country, and I got to explore a city I had never been to before. On top of that, I gained a new perspective about traveling to places outside the US. I think I need to keep this up. Most of all, I am grateful for Metallica, I probably would never have done a trip like this if it wasn’t for them.

Next up for me on the M72 Tour is the lone home game: East Rutherford in August.

My M27 World Tour itinerary

My lifetime Metallica concert history

Link to YouTube playlist of all official Metallica concert videos I have been present for.

Metallica songs I have seen performed on the M72 World Tour

All Metallica songs I have seen performed live