Paris et Moi

       We’re in Paris! And I don't know how many titles will have French words in them from now on. Probably a lot- I'm sorry. Typically a trip of this kind is planned many, many months ahead, so deciding to go with just a month and a half lead time just didn’t make it feel as real. However, buying some wardrobe essentials fit for an autumn in Paris began to make the upcoming trip more present. And the act of organizing, putting things into our storage space, and packing locked in the reality of the trip.  

Paris 2002. This picture captures my high school essence. Bee- bopping around Paris in my Harry Potter shirt. I left my Harry Potter shirt at home this time, but I do have  a one at home, irl.  And I still wear that pair of converse.

       I first visited Paris with my family when I was in high school. We hit the typical tourist spots with a bit more insider knowledge as my parents lived in Paris for five years during the 1980s. Their experience of living in Europe was certainly formative for our family. My siblings and I were all born in Europe and my parents established a value of learning and exploring through travel. We were lucky enough to get to travel internationally as a family and our parents always encouraged opportunities for my siblings and me to travel.

       This is Seth and I's third trip to Paris together. We first visited Paris in March 2014. We had an invitation from an Atlantan friend, Mikey, who would periodically go to Paris for work and loved it so much he fully moved there in 2011. As in, he went there for a work stint and just never came home. Our first trip was amazing. I think Seth wasn't so sure that he would like Paris, but we had a fabulous time (of course). This trip was also our first introduction to the love of Mikey's life, Rose, a.k.a Rosie. Seth, Mikey, and I were always a friendship trio that blended well in that the connection between any two individuals within the trio was interesting and intimate enough to not care who you got stuck with. While the closeness may vary across subject matter, there aren't very many subjects off-limits within the group. The dynamics of our American threesome was extended to include this brilliant British lovely and we created a mega-crew. (It may sound like I'm gushing because I totally am at the moment. We've just arrived and we're all so stoked to see each other, so I'm just gonna gush 'til the gushin's gone!)

Rosie and I falling in love in Paris 2014.

       Mikey and Rose lived in le Marais in the 3rd arrondissement (neighborhood) of Paris. It's a historic district, but compared to Atlanta or Houston where new developments are the trend- all of Paris looks like a historic district to me. Seth and I walked through Notre Dame and visited the Catacombs of Paris, which were cool, but mostly we didn't attempt to adjust to jetlag, stayed up all night, drank coffee in parks during the day, and ate delicious food. Traveling with Seth is different than traveling with my parents growing up. My family always had an agenda for every day.  I wanted Seth to see all the things I had enjoyed on my previous trip, but in the end we were content to have the local experience with our friends. And when I say "we" were content, I mean I slowly realized there was a different way to travel and loosened my white-knuckled grip over control of activities. We only went to one random museum in le Marais called le musée Carnavalet, which focuses on the history of the city. It was actually super awesome and I highly recommend it. This more relaxed way of travel with Seth allows for little gems like le musée Carnavalet to be found.*

*I was telling Seth about this paragraph and he listed off a bunch of other stuff we did on this trip and expressed how often he's heard me tell people we didn't do that much, which he doesn't like. In addition to the sites listed above, we laid eyes on the Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower (we watched it sparkle at night),  and the Louvre. I mean, yeah, just walking around Paris you're going to see stuff. But, maybe we'll go in them or up them on one of these trips.*

Seth and I falling in love with Paris. Spring 2014

Seth taking full advantage of chalet in Thones. 

       For the next trip, we invited ourselves for Christmas holiday in 2015. Mikey and Rose had moved to Monmartre in the 18th arrondissement, very near Sacré-Cœur (a beautful church on a hill that overlooks Paris).  We planned a little trip within a trip this time by driving to the French Alps for several days. We stayed in a chalet in Thones and explored Chamonix-Mont Blanc.

Walking around Chamonix. 

         After running around the Alps, we hung around the apartment in Paris a lot. Rosie and I binge-watched "Making a Murderer" on Netflix, which was actually very interesting to watch with a non-American in regards to the portrait it paints of the American judicial system. We also planned and prepared for our holiday celebrations, which included Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners. We celebrated Christmas Eve at a friend of Rosie's and Mikey's whois from Wyoming, but had lived in Paris for over 20 years. It was a proper French feast of beef bourguignon, which is essentially beef stew. We were informed that it is considered impolite to sop up the gravy with a piece of bread and that Americans are well-known for this crass habit. We lived up to our American ways by sponging our plates clean with a warm baguette. I don't have anything to prove- no regrets. After dinner, the group decided to go to Sacré-Cœur to see part of midnight mass. I’m “Catholic by heritage,” so going into midnight mass enhanced Christmas feels, even for just a few minutes, by recalling my family's old tradition of Christmas mass. Christmas Day was celebrated with a roasted goose. We received a little Christmas miracle when we picked up the goose and learned it was stuffed with foie gras. It wasn’t really a miracle so much as an explantation for why the goose was so expensive.  

This looks like a honeymoon, right? View apartment balcony.

       We spent almost two weeks in Paris over that Christmas and when the time came to leave, I didn’t feel ready. When I got back to Houston, I bought a book about how to make living abroad work. I was fully ready to have the ex-pat experience as my parents had done in the 80s, but the energy faded as I settled back into my life in Houston. However, it’s been something that Seth and I have discussed at various points since then. Perhaps, not Paris, but living and working abroad somewhere in Europe for a few years. For me, this long trip to Europe is partly about getting the feel of living here and being open to opportunities that might allow for international living. 

       Despite not sleeping much on the red-eye flight to Paris, I felt extremely positively in the uber on the way to Mikey and Rose’s apartment. I thought how cool it was that Seth and I had done part of the Appalachian Trail and also got to have this experience in Europe, whatever it was going to be. I visited my parents in Nashville a few days before leaving and my mom had a map of the trail hung up in her laundry room. I measured the distance Seth and I had traveled on the trail between my thumb and forefinger and still felt proud about it- even though the inches didn’t add up to much distance on the three-foot-long map. Prior to hiking the trail, the cities and terrain measurements on that map were meaningless. Looking at the map now- I can point out what shelters we stayed in, describe the cities we walked through, and intimately recount the elevation illustrated in the topography map. Thinking about those mountaintops feels like a long time ago now- even though it's only been a couple months. Now, I think, “wow, we actually did that!” We still had a uniquely badass experience even if it was only three weeks. And I think I noted in another post that a northbounder we met at a shelter said that Maine had the best views because it was so wild, so I’m convinced we got to experience one of the best parts of the trail. Now that the adventure is continuing, I feel better able to balance the disappointment of the loss of the trail with the opportunities that being off the trail allows. 

This is actually technically the first time I was in France. I think I'm four months old in this picture. My family lived in Spain at the time and I got to go on this trip because I was on the boob.