How many times have you been to Paris? None, one, two, or more?
The day before yesterday I returned from my third to visit to Paris, and even though the trip was fine in the end (the last two days), I experienced a whole array of different feelings, not all of which were entirely positive. But let us start slowly.
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Having a picnic in Bois de Vincennes (an alternative to Bois de Boulogne, which you might have read about in the works of Henry Miller or some other authors).
- Mingling wiz ze »French« – 2 Chinese, a bunch of Bulgarians, a Cambodian, 2 Swiss (Bulgarian euphemism for people from Maghreb), a Serbian, a Bosnian and some other that were possibly half French => c’est ça la France
- Feeling French vibes while sitting in a corner café with Croque Monsieur and Croque Madame in front of you. #lifeisgood
- The inside of the Sacre Coeur – really nice ceiling and mosaics with lots of gold
- Rowing a boat on a river and sending a message in the bottle to the potential rescuer, messing with swans, which can get aggressive if you bother them, which we can’t help but 😉
- Beautifully contrasted works by Mapplethorpe and Rodin in Rodin’s museum
- Strolling through Marais, a Jewish/gay/alternative district … was surprised how gay-friendly Paris is (but then again, maybe all big cities are?), and how multicultural it is, and how us, Slovenians, are sooo straight and monocultural and it is not like that everywhere, thank god!
LOWLIGHTS:
- Counting how many times a person can get lost while looking for a particular house number on a U-shaped street, only to find the Café des deux Moulins, where Amélie worked in a movie, much smaller and less charming than what it appeared in a movie and not even sitting down to have a drink.
- Walking while looking at a widely open map, only to feel a sudden pain in solar plexus (hello there, street pole!). Ouch!
- Visiting two museums in one day and painfully realising your legs and mind/concentration, can’t cash the checks your ambitions have written prior to boarding on project »Paris«.
- Trying to reconcile male and female views on how to go about orientating in a big city.
It’s been a long time (maybe more than 5 years) since I embarked on tourist endeavour the size of Paris and with so many famous and see-worthy tourist attractions you are bound to bite off more than you can chew, no matter how smart you think you are having bypassed the Eiffel tower and the Louvre. I also realised the spirit of travel depends a lot on who you’re with or who you meet. There is only a limited amount of »tourist sites« a person can digest (well, also maybe depending on how you like them or how new they are to you), so incorporating a lot of social activities and time to do relax and do nothing is as important.
I curated a couple of photos just for you, hope you enjoy them! :))))
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