Paris va me manquer

What will I miss the most about Paris? Is it that smell of freshly baked breads and pastries every time you walk past a boulangerie? Or maybe it's the long lazy afternoons in Luxembourg Gardens or Champs de Mars. Maybe it's bus rides that take you past Notre Dame and the Louvre. Or it could be breakfasts of pain au chocolat in front of la Tour Eifel. What I do know is that as these spring evenings get longer and warmer, all I want to do is wander along the Seine and profiter of all the Paris is.

These past few weekends have provided some of the most perfect examples. There was the trip the amusement park Foire du Trone, and a ferris wheel ride that took you so high above Paris that you could see the Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur from the other side of the city (trop jolie!). And then there have been the picnics involving lots of baguette and cheese and wine on the bridges and the banks of the Seine, with all the quintessential views of Paris. There have been the long walks home in less-than-sober states, and even the time when I was walking home with my roommate Tracee, we heard live music coming from a bar and had to stop. I went upstairs, and the windows were open to reveal the typical French balcony, view of the Seine and the sounds of the Frenchman with his guitar and beautiful voice drifting lazily out of the open doors downstairs, onto the street and then up through the windows. I stood there, soaked it up, and thought how much I will truly miss Paris when I'm gone.

Sure, there's plenty of things that get annoying. Sure there's days when I hate France. When people make fun of my accent or can't understand me. When I get tired of how dirty Paris is, how expensive things are, how rude the people can be, how hard it is to do anything. But those days are far outnumbered and outweighed by the days when nothing could go wrong and everything is just so...Paris. I'll be crushed when I can't walk around and hear French surrounding me. I know I've lived abroad before, but there's just something about French that makes it so much different than anything you could ever hope to imagine.

So as the nostalgia sets in as I charge into my last 4 weeks in the City of Lights, I'll try and profiter of everything the loveliness of Paris has to offer. If there's one thing I've learned from the adventures I've had in all of my travels abroad, it would most likely be to cram as much as possible before the time is up, because there's never enough time and there's always too much to do. So, Paris, let's do this.


Kicking it with Oscar Wilde



Picnics on the Seine



Breakfasts at the Eiffel Tower



Look at the sky



Typical.