It was raining when I arrived in Paris at midnight last September – My first stop on a tour of several European cities I would explore with two of my oldest friends. It was a dizzy chore squeezing as much culture as we could into our trip, checking things off our ambitious itinerary and not knowing when, if ever, we would be back.
Fast forward a year and I found myself suddenly back in Paris, this time on the tail-end of Paris Fashion Week, with a new air of confidence:
I knew this place.
Not intimately, yet, but we were certainly acquainted. I knew the metro to be about as decipherable the New York subway.
I knew this time to look for the ‘sortie’ and not the ‘exit.’
I knew the air would be full of car exhaust and cigarette smoke.
I knew there would be bread with every meal.
And I knew I would become a different woman in her presence, as I do with each city I find myself in.
So I went with it – Swapped my daily coffee for chocolat chaud, succeeded with a few awkward French phrases, simplified my grooming routine, and let perfectionism slide like I was following some formula for How To Be French Caitlyn.
“I like Frenchmen very much, because even when they insult you they do it so nicely.” – Josephine Baker
To meet new people from other cultures, is that the allure of travel, or is it that we go to new places to see who we’ll become there? For better or worse, can we take some part of that self home with us?
“Quarrels in France strengthen a love affair, in America they end it.” – The Paris Diary of Ned Rorem
So, we wandered starry-eyed through the Gustav Klimt installation at Atelier des Lumières, bristled briefly at a few newly-discovered differences before getting drunk on Rebekah Del Rio at David Lynch’s Silencio.
We couldn’t make it out the door before 11AM, but always found a restaurant willing to serve us brunch anyway. Le Train Bleu in the Gare de Lyon train station, pictured at the beginning of this post, is an honorable mention, mainly for its historical significance and rather ornate decor. (Read: I was unimpressed with the menu, though that’s really only due to the fact my egg allergy made it hard to find a suitable breakfast entree.)
“To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.” – Victor Hugo
We marveled at the view from our Airbnb, 6 floors up in the 12th arrondissement. We spent hours walking the streets, in and out of strange old stores, and capturing the experience as best we could with cameras and iPhones. Our last day at the Louvre, I found the Egypt exhibit closed (again!) and wandered aimlessly through it’s endless marble corridors before reclining on the lawn to rest before dinner.
As the sun set on the Luxembourg Gardens, the Eiffel Tower shimmered in the distance, and the LouLou restaurant staff brought our main course, we smirked and toasted to a happy anniversary knowing full well we’d only just met.
