From a professional point of view, photographing popular places many people like to see or fantasize about is certainly more rewarding, in being easier to sell. But is it more noble, interesting or even enjoyable in the long run?
Doing portraits of third rate media personalities pays better than portraits of farmers, photographing panda bears in a zoo pays better than photographing some near-extinct mole out in a remote desert, and photographing mail order catalogues is a far more feasible way of making a living than doing fine-art still-life - nonetheless most people would opt for the latter each as a work of passion, and consider the former hard earned money...
The classic way to learn a language is in that language itself, and at the very best, you can get some crash course enabling your first steps - the rest won't be cross-language. English is a bid of a odd man out there, as our modern times Lingua Franca, trade pidgin English, is taught to aspiring MBAs in cross-language courses everywhere. But there is no similar application for rudimentary French. If you want to learn French at a university, you'll often have to do it the old, hard way, and with the target of enabling you to comprehend (or even write) poetry and literature - on the positive side, that way you'll have learned something more valuable than merely doing Excel sheets and Powerpoint presentations in yet another language.
