My shoulders were tight and knotted with pain, and my eyes were burning. I had spent the entire weekend in my 900 square foot apartment in Brooklyn meticulously researching for an upcoming trip to Paris. My husband and I would be visiting for just 72 hours coming off of a week long business trip to London. Immediately after excitedly booking online, I had made the error of telling some colleagues and friends about the trip. “Well…I hope you’re not going to spend your time doing the usual stuff. I swear I roll my eyes at every photo on my newsfeed of a wide eyed woman marveling at the Eiffel Tower,” one co-worker remarked.
A week later, my friend gave me her input as we enjoyed frozen yogurt and strolled down by the water in south Brooklyn. “Eh, I found all the landmarks to be really dirty and disappointing, actually.” She shoveled a spoonful of yogurt and sprinkles into her mouth and shrugged. “I wouldn’t walk along the Seine, it smells like piss, skip that.” My mouth hung open, slack with disappointment. “Well, what about the Louvre?” Her eyes rolled nearly to the back of her head. “Ugh. So overrated. I’d sooner have waited in line for a root canal to be honest. I’m telling you, skip all of that shit. If you don’t you’ll walk away hating Paris.”
So, I spent an entire summer weekend scouring every guidebook and scrolling through blog posts. I was in search of a unique way to experience the City of Light. Should I see the Museum of Hunting and Nature? Well, I had no interest in either topic, but I didn’t want to be the kind of traveler who only sees the Louvre. I didn’t want to be, as my colleague put it, the woman who acts as if she alone discovered Paris. (Did you all know about this place called Notre Dame Cathedral?! Wowee!)
Having a weekend full of non-typical experiences in the French capital was my proverbial white whale. I was the monomaniacal Captain Ahab, pursuing this exhaustedly, much to the annoyance of my first mate – my husband.
I would be remiss not to mention the reason for my ruthless pursuit in crafting the perfect Parisian vacation. My mother was spending her summer caring for my terminally ill grandfather during this time. He often spoke in his last years of things he wished he had done and places he had wished he had seen. His regret and longing was visceral, and shook me to my core. Therefore, not only did I need to see Paris, I needed to see it the right way. I had to be left with no regrets. I did not want, as my cousin said, to be an accomplice in hating Paris. According to those around me, this meant finding some bespoke path through the city.
I called my mother to tell her about our upcoming adventure. As she exhaustedly changed the linens on my grandfather’s bed, she remarked, “Boy, what I wouldn’t give to see the Eiffel Tower in my lifetime.”
I grew pensive after we ended our conversation. What in the hell was I doing? Why else do people dream of visiting The City of Light if not to see sights like the Eiffel Tower? Or to stroll along the Seine River?
As per usual, my practical, hard-working, Italian, mother had administered a potent dose of common sense.
There is a good reason that people dream of seeing the sparkling Eiffel Tower. A good reason that people dream of seeing the Mona Lisa. A good reason that people dream of having a picnic in the Jardin Luxembourg.
How could I visit Paris and return not having seen these iconic, cultural sites?
Besides, our weekend in Paris would inherently be unique by virtue of it happening through my eyes, a first timer to the famed French capital. Everyone who visits Paris, who visits, anywhere has a unique encounter. Two people can marvel at the same site and have two completely different experiences.
Therefore, I dropped my ‘Captain Ahab’ relentlessness, but kept the Captain Ahab beard growing on my face because…I…am a part Italian woman. And you can never just get rid of facial hair if you’re an Italian woman.
***
So, at the tail end of August, I stepped off the train from London for the first time with my husband. And from the very first moment to the last, it was purely magical.
Paris was a very visceral experience for me, I remember it in terms of senses.
The sky was always a shade of blue that I’d never seen before. During the day, it looked as though it popped out from the pages of a Madeline children’s book. It was a pale blue always with the perfect number of fluffy clouds. And at night, it was ethereal — a lavender and navy blend, cut with twinkling stars and the soft, eerie beams from the luminescent, full, white moon. In three separate, enormous, wells carved into the pavement along the Seine, people danced to salsa and classical music beneath that heavy, full moon and also beneath the fluttery low hanging branches of trees which sometimes brushed against the heads of the dancers. A chilly breeze would push through the branches. Making a few of them move in a way that looked like clapping.
Each building in Paris was a work of art and belonged in a museum both for beauty and age. Walking among those perfectly carved stone edifices, some with balconies, looking unchanged from the days of Revolution, soft pink and cream with sloping gray roofs and tiny blue windows from which people danced, and fell in love, and spilled wine on each other from laughing too hard. I placed my hand against their outer walls on our daily walks and tried to imagine who before me had also touched that exact cold, stoney, spot.
Everything we ate in Paris was nothing short of a religious experience. Platters of pungent, creamy, cheese were devoured at every meal, of course, along with tantalizing, white wines, fresh flaky bread, and the creamiest, most decadent butter I’ve ever had in my life. And of course the crispy, crackling, roasted duck served with potatoes au gratin — that was truly life changing.
Eating food in Paris is like the moment when you really see your partner for the first time, years after dating, and realizing that raw exposure allows you to love them to a depth that you never knew existed. From that point on, you never want the superficial version that everyone gets to see ever again. And snobbishly, that’s what happens. I’m sorry, I can’t pretend that yellow shit in a tub that I get from aisle five is butter.
And it’s also where you eat that matters too. One of the best meals that we had the entire weekend came from a supermarket, but again, the freshness and quality was a knockout, and the fact that we were having a picnic in Le Jardin Luxembourg? Even eating dog shit would have felt like a luxurious experience. But luckily, we were not eating dog shit (although beef tartar is kind of close — sorry. That was the one meal I didn’t like.)
No, instead we had semi sweet fizzing cider and celery root salad and a wheel of Brie cheese and an entire tray of light, chewy, flavorful macarons. And in that moment of biting into a strawberry one, I remember thinking, “I think I’ve seen the best that life has to offer. You can take me now, if you need me, God.” I took in every detail around me, and it was easy because life felt…slow in that afternoon.
I listened to the French children yelling excitedly when their small, chosen boat arrived safely docked at the edge of the pond. I remember the damp and bold fragrance of the vivacious flowers of every hue imaginable growing abundantly near the pristine grass. I imagined that we were the honored guests of the royalty who lived in the building just before us, decorated even on the outside with intricate shapes and designs which looked to go back hundreds of years.
But it turns out that this was just the tip of the iceberg.
It turns out that iceberg is not that easy of a word to spell, because that just took me four attempts.
Maybe that’s what took so long in the control room of the Titanic to get the message out. The operator was like, “we struck an icebirg…no wait, iceburg…DAMMIT hold on…”
Speaking of precarious situations, we reached the Louvre with only an hour left in the day. That means running, no really, RUNNING until I could smell the sweet, salty, sweat clinging to my body as we saw that lady with no arms who looks like she’s dying to throw a frisbee and that other person with no arms, but who at least has wings.
The Mona Lisa ended in me getting body checked, but it was spectacular to see in real life. My favorite, however, was Liberty Leading the People. There’s something about the French flag that makes me emotional.
With that being said, standing under the gigantic one at the Arc de Triomphe as it soared slowly through the air like the wings of a magnanimous vulture, I wept. And I wept again as I gazed down the Champs-Elysees and the hundreds of people and cars sweeping through because each of them had no possible idea that their presence in this momentary portrait in front of me meant so much, it was a perfect re-creation of everything I’d thought the Champs-Elysees would be.
And yet there were still more magic moments to be had.
Running my fingers along every book imaginable in Shakespeare and Co and realizing that sometimes people are lucky enough to sleepover. To sleep in the SAME PLACE that many writers of the Lost Generation hung out. There’s a real residual energy in the tight and narrow place, it conjures feelings of adventure and hope and fantasy. The books are organized, but not in a stringent fashion whatsoever, and the place is colorful, but in a muted way, it feels like it hasn’t changed at all since the 1920’s.
Seeing the many, MANY candles flicker inside of Notre Dame and holding my breath as I looked up at the dizzyingly high arches. We snagged a spot on a tour to the very top, and I thought for sure we’d tumbled back in time to the 1400s and that a Quasi Modo (Broadway, NOT cartoon) type of character might climb down from the unfathomably large bell in the tower, eager to talk to the gargoyles and the stars who looked over the most beautiful city in the world.
And of course, the Eiffel tower. It seemed to pop out of nowhere the first time and it quite literally took my breath away. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even think thoughts, I could only stare. I made a point to see it from every angle: from far away, from underneath, from the small table of a cafe, and of course watching it twinkle with hundreds of lights at night. As Americans, we have this notion that only the very wealthy are privileged and blessed, but seeing the tower made me realize that I too am privileged and blessed. There was one moment, where no one else seemed to be around late at night. I Face-Timed my mother and casually showed her the angles as best as I could, feeling as if it belonged to me and me alone.
Everyone in my life who sees photos of me in Paris equates me to being a superstar. In most people’s minds, who else gets to see Paris besides superstars, the very privileged, and the very blessed? And that’s when I realized, having an ‘ordinary’ experience in Paris is impossible.
The very act of traveling to Paris is extraordinary.
Even if you wait on line to visit the Louvre with the hope of seeing the Mona Lisa.
Even if you buy a key chain from a peddler beneath the Eiffel Tower.
Even if you buy macarons from the supermarket instead of the boulangerie and enjoy them in the park.
There are people who save their entire lives for Paris. There are people who have posters of Paris on their walls and try to manifest their way there. And there are people who will never get to go.
Each night we walked over the Pont Alexandre III bridge through the misty, gray, foggy coolness, and I’d itch my left wrist, just to make sure that I wasn’t in a cruel, lucid, dream. We’d go back to our small, cozy, hotel room and watch Alice in Wonderland and I’d reflect on my own Wonderland that I’d gotten to explore. It was just as exciting and mysterious and colorful.
Often in travel, we’re told to take the road less traveled. You know, the one Frost wrote about. The funny thing about that poem is that he was actually being facetious. Meaning, the road less traveled isn’t usually any better than the one that is always traveled.
My memories of seeing the ‘ordinary’ sites in Paris have been what keeps me going in my most difficult moments in life. My memories of the Mona Lisa and touching books in Shakespeare and Co. make me smile when I’m on the floor sobbing. When I feel like I’m too stupid for my job. When I sat through over twenty hours of labor, the twinkling lights of the Eiffel Tower etched into my memory pulled me through the pain.
I have taken the road, heavily traveled, and that has made all the difference.
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