Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin The Eiffel Tower was the highly visible centerpiece of the Games that spread out across the city AFP via Getty Images Why were the Paris Olympics so thrilling and compelling, the most satisfying sport-filled fortnight (plus two days) in decades? The smashing success of the XXXIII Olympiad was all the more surprising because the host country, like so many others, is politically mired in divisive chaos; because Parisians are more well-known for their quick-triggered irritability than their hospitality; and because it began with an opening ceremony that was anything but promising. Forbes How The Olympics Made Paris More Tourist-Friendly By Alex Ledsom No matter how much NBC cooed over its coverage, the unfortunately waterlogged event on the Seine jerked along in fits and starts, thanks to an endless flotilla of shopworn bateaux mouches stuffed with athletes, a headless, cringeworthy Marie Antoinette dummy generating bloody streamers, acrobats swaying on poles and hanging off Notre Dame’s scaffolding for no reason, a severely out-of-step can-can, badly lip-synching French singers and an obviously under-rehearsed Lady Gaga stuck in a musical number cribbed from LaToya Jackson’s infamously risible 1992 residency at the famed Moulin Rouge. The evening was saved by a vibrant welcome from the charismatic Tony Estanguet, former Olympian and head of the Paris Organizing Committee, the return of Celine Dion in glorious voice and th.