Hola Stuart,

If what we want to say is:

Can you motivate yourself to visit Paris? or in a more natural way... "Do you fancy visiting Paris?"

we need: 

But you could also say (without the "a" though):

meaning "Visiting Paris, does that put you in a good mood?"

In this case, if you turn it round, you can see that the subject of the sentence is "Visitar París", then the verb agreeing with the subject in singular "anima" and an direct object pronoun "te" (=a ti).

This last sentence is using the verb "animar" in a similar way we use "gustar":

Other sentences using this last structure could be for example:

I hope this clarifies it.

Saludos

Inma