I had dreamt of Paris for years, fantasizing about the first time that I would go there, seeing the famed Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysées, Arch de Triomph, Louvre, and Musée d'Orsay. I imagined seeing countless mustachioed men walking the streets in striped shirts and berets. Through my experiences in France thus far, I figured that the stereotypical imagine of a parisian man would be pretty far off, but I ended up being even more wrong about my experiences and sights to be seen than any amount of time in Aix could have adequately prepared me for.
Upon arrival in Paris by way of TGV, I was in pretty good spirits. I had just made the acquaintance of a pleasant frenchman named Stephane, and I managed to carry on a 2hr conversation with him entirely in French, which is still rather out of the ordinary for me at this point. It helped that he didn't actually know enough English to converse, because most french people that I've encountered up to this point will respond in English to me when they know I'm anglophone, even when I speak to them in French. This good practice put me in a good mood as I emerged into the streets of this city that I had been dreaming of for so long.
My excitement for the city continued as the group with whom I was traveling arrived at our parisian apartment that we were renting for the weekend; it was beautiful, posh, and still surprisingly cheap for its location. We explored the apartment for a few minutes, until the strike of midnight rendered me too giddy with excitement to stay in one place.
Floating on dreams of the movie Midnight in Paris, I departed with the group in search of the Tour Eiffel. After a while of walking, I caught my first glimpse of the monument sparkling in the parisian sky. At this point, I figured that it would be no problem to find it up close as long as we made sure it was visible at least every once in a while along the route.
Not so. We lost the Eiffel Tower.
And then we found out that we were still a good two miles away. And later on, we found out that the tower's lights turn off around 1am, which retrospectively explained how we lost the enormous thing. Upon accepting defeat for the night, we got some kebabs and returned to the apartment and slept until the arrival of our next friend to join the apartment, and subsequently the real disasters began to occur.
I awoke the next morning to see Shannon arriving in tears. Evidently she had been pickpocketed on the train on her way there, losing her wallet with her bank cards and €250 in it. We were able to cancel her cards before anybody could use them, but she was still down a good $320 worth of cash, plus she was understandably jarred by the violation.
Although we didn't meet our goal of seeing the catacombs, our day went pretty well uphill from there as we visited some beautiful landmarks and ate some incredibly french food. That day, we consumed some staple moules frites (mussels and fries), and I tried escargots for the first time. The latter is delicious for the first few seconds of chewing, then grows to taste rather earthy, so I would not necessarily want to try that again, but I am nevertheless glad to have tried it.
The landmarks proved to be the highlight of my day, particularly when we visited Shakespeare & Company, which is the most wonderful bookstore to ever exist. My entrance into the store was a bit disorienting, because although it's located in Paris, France, the most stereotypically french city in the world, Shakespeare & Co. is an english bookstore, filled with English language books and a cashier from Baltimore, Maryland. Despite being in such a stark cultural contrast with the surrounding city, these books were beautiful. The walls are stacked high with books, and there's a certain quaint and homey feel to the overall decorum throughout the store, but you don't feel the true extent of it all until you climb to the upper level.
This floor is dedicated to antique books and typewriters, either of which guests are free to break out for a spin while curled up comfortably on their couches, and a little look that looks insignificant at first glance, but was the most magical spot that I've been to in France thus far. Inside this nook are little handwritten notes on whatever scrap or post-it people could find, expressed in countless languages, saying things ranging from "Sonya was here" to the most deeply poetic reflections. Sitting in there and reading those notes overwhelms you with all of the lives that have been touched by that city and store, and all of the amazing ways in which people can say so much on a simple little scrap of paper. Nothing in Paris could top that little nook for me, so essentially it was all downhill from there.
The rest of the weekend followed a general pattern of people being pickpocketed and the group attempting to make up for it with food and sightseeing, and then more people getting sick. Hanna got her wallet stolen on her birthday. We saw the Sacré Coeur. Trent's iPhone was stolen. We went to the most famed falafel place in Paris (on our second try, because evidently there are two different streets named Rosiers in Paris, located altogether too far apart from one another). Sara missed her train and her Carte Jeune went missing. We got quiche. I got sick and was too ill on our last day to go sight seeing or eat delicious food. I read a really good book from my new favorite bookstore.
A lot of things went wrong that weekend, so a lot of people lost a lot of money and items, and I missed out on the city's most famous landmarks. Living the dream. It certainly could have been more nightmarish for me, though.
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