A Letter About That Paris Trip to Myself From…Myselffeatured
From: Me
Re: Paris Trip
Dear Nicole,
Wow, this already sounds quasi-formal and weird for a list I want to give you of things to remember about your trip to Paris. And I need to write this now, as I’m just off my flight from Paris and about to board our connecting flight home.
((No, it couldn’t have waited until you got home, because if you waited, you’d never write it))
Ed Note: This didn’t get posted until a full week later so…case in point 🙂
You love Paris. If you had to choose any one city to visit over and over and over again, it would be Paris. You won’t remember how much you love it until you get into the city. Not on the drive from the airport – you’ll be looking for a feeling of familiarity that won’t click until you hit the city center arrondissements – but when you get close to whatever hotel you’re staying at. You’ll pass a string of cafes that will excite you. You’ll see your first Monoprix and get giddy. The first time you get a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower probably won’t be until the next day or maybe even later, but the feeling you get when you see it for the first time on that visit, you’ll want to bottle it up and keep it with you forever because how can anything be that massive and all-consuming and beautiful?!
But before we get deeper into Paris, lets talk about the packing because girllllllll. You thought you did better and you did – but let me remind you of this: you packed so many pairs of pants, and you only wore leggings. You packed four pairs of shoes, and you only really wore one (two if you count your airport shoes). You survived with one coat (even though you swore you needed three before you left). PACK LESS. You’re going shopping. It’s what you do in Paris. And that $100 charge for an extra bag? Girl, that gets you, like, so many boxes of soup mix at Monoprix and at least a dozen macarons from Ladurée.
Speaking of the shopping? When in doubt, buy it. If you need a sign, this is it. Do it. You know your limits and you work hard so that you can enjoy the things that make you happy. That La Vie Parisienne sweater? You wish you bought it. The Givenchy bag? You’re glad it’s in your closet. And that vintage Chanel purse? You’ve been lusting after that for years. It’s a long and expensive flight. Don’t leave with regrets.
You always say that one of your biggest travel flaws is waiting until the end of a trip to really immerse yourself and do the things you wanted to do early on. DO THEM EARLY. On our first day in Paris this time, you finally visited the Opera Garnier (gorgeous, right?), you hit the rooftop at Galeries Lafayette, you visited the Rue Crémieux AND you rode around on the Hop On Hop Off bus. You prioritized all of the things on your list that are the most beautiful on a sunny day with clear blue skies and as it turned out, it was the only sunny day you saw for your entire trip. The rest of your trip was filled with gray skies and fog (which is a different kind of beautiful, don’t ever let it get in your way when you travel anywhere!), and you got your pictures of the places that mattered to you most when they mattered the most.
You hate how much you love the Hop On Hop Off bus. You did it on your first visit to Paris and now you find yourself doing it every time you go to Paris. Embrace it. You proved to yourself on this trip that you can still do the things you enjoyed on other visits and still make the time to do new things. And the HOHO is great. Embrace that, too. There’s not a single better way to enjoy a city than to surround yourself with as you glide through it in a low-effort, safe environment.
Safe. You know I had to remind you of that, because you had a couple of tough go’s on this one. The first one was when the taxi driver charged you €250 for a €55 drive from the airport to the hotel. You asked him how much, and you didn’t realize there was a city-set flat rate, so you didn’t question it when he said metered. Always use an official taxi or a service that you trust. The tough city girl in you finds it hard to trust others or accept help (even when you need it – like when you can’t get your bag into the overhead!), but you can’t always chalk that skepticism up to paranoia. Sometimes, the skepticism is completely valid, and it’s okay to voice that.
The second tough go was on New Year’s Eve on the Metro, leaving lunch at Pink Mamma. You and Stephanie were walking down the stairs leading down to the boarding area for the Metro with two other girls. Stephanie was in front of you on the stairs, and when you felt someone grabbing at your hand, for a second, you thought it was her. It didn’t make sense to you that someone would be lunging for your cell phone from behind because even though you know people who know people who have been mugged, it’s never happened to you. You live in one of the biggest cities in the world, and I think because you live in it and nothing bad happens, you take for granted that in another city, in a safer city, these things wouldn’t happen. But they do, and they almost did. Your first instinct was to shout NO! Repeatedly. You don’t remember why you started shouting. It was pure instinct and you didn’t even realize what was happening until it was over. One minute, you felt someone grabbing at you, your fingers suddenly throbbing from the intense vice you clamped around your phone, the next you were shouting and the other two girls started looking at you and by the time you realized what was happening and that it was happening to you, you turned around to see a non-descript slender figure running up the stairs in a black track suit with a white stripe down the arms, hoodie pulled up. Nameless and faceless. You were so proud of yourself that your first instinct was to fight because you may be many things but you are NOT a fighter. Mom yelled at you when you called her later to tell her what happened. You’re not supposed to resist or fight. This nameless faceless person? They could have stabbed you. Or shot you. Or pulled you by the hair down onto the stairs. They could have hurt you. They might have followed you into the Metro and you didn’t even notice. They got close enough to you to grab your phone from behind you on the stairs without you feeling their presence. That sense you think you have from being a tough city girl? It doesn’t exist. It can happen to you and it can happen anywhere. Put the phone away.
Oh, and there was the part where Stephanie literally melted the only flat iron you had packed between the two of you (because apparently the step down converter wasn’t enough to deal with that Euro voltage). But on the plus, you now have a shared European flat iron that will not melt in higher voltages and doesn’t need a converter when you take your Euro trips. On the minus, Stephanie is now down a flat iron.
But that was a lot of words on the bad stuff. Let’s get back to the good (like that meal at Pink Mamma before the whole thwarted mugging thing).
Those peekaboo glimpses of Sacre Coeur from the side streets leading off Grands Boulevards – they made your breath hitch. Your friends tell you that you romanticize these cities you visit, but how could you not? You live for the feeling you get every time you get a little glimpse of something beautiful in an unexpected place and at its very essence, that’s so much of Paris. That’s why you love wandering around so much – you never know what you’ll find, but you know it’ll be beautiful. No matter where you go, always leave yourself time to wander.
Nothing tasted better to you this entire trip than the sliced baguette slathered in butter and drizzled with honey that you hacked together from the hotel’s breakfast spread. This was also the simplest thing you ate this trip because you really made an effort to try more local restaurants. You can wimp out of them sometimes because you don’t speak the language and sometimes, you’re afraid you’re too American and you’ll stick out when you much prefer to blend in. But you ate at new local cafés every single day you were in Paris. Everyone was nice to you…even though you constantly said Bonjour instead of Bonsoir and said huh? every time someone spoke to you in French until they realized you didn’t. You loved these cafés. They’re some of your best memories from this trip. You didn’t make it to every café and bar on your list, but that’s okay – if there’s one certainty, it’s that you’ll always return to Paris.
On that note, eating a meal in a proper restaurant takes hours, and most people don’t even head to dinner until after 8:00. Plan your time accordingly, and go early to any place that may have crazy waits (like those insane lines to get into Chartier every night! You were REALLY glad you got in on Christmas Day once you saw the lines to get a table stretching down two city blocks every night!).
Oh, and just because you’re in France doesn’t mean every French dish you eat will be the greatest you’ve ever had. You’re still on the hunt for good French onion soup (because none of the soups you had were nearly as good as the one you have at the steakhouses onboard those cruise ships!), but the steak frites? Those were as good as advertised. Maybe even better. Stephanie said the Croque Madame was pretty baller, too.
It’s okay to slow down. You were back at the hotel by 11:00 PM every night. You weren’t feeling the late night bar/club scene, and it’s always okay to head to bed early. Always remember that this is supposed to be vacation 🙂
Chances are, wherever you stay, the only English-speaking channels you’ll have on the TV are CNN International and BBC International. Bring a book. Or a magazine. You need an hour or two of wind down before you sleep, and if you don’t have something to read, you’ll just spend it all on Instagram.
Smiles are universal, even when you don’t speak the same language as someone. Language barriers give you a little anxiety, but a smile is universal and always goes a long way. And with that, TALK TO PEOPLE! Shop owners, strangers, fellow travelers. Talk to them. Hear their stories. Tell them yours. Meet people. Think of all you would have missed if you didn’t – the stories about the roses at Versailles from the tea shop owner, or the reccos from the expat shopping at Thanx God I’m a VIP (…yes, that’s a real store)
Christmas markets? They are the greatest thing. They’re as big as the Taste of Chicago, as festive as the Christkindlmarket (complete with all of the gluhwein!) and they have the décor of those Christmas bar pop ups your friends go crazy over. Eat all the tartiflette, ride the ferris wheel, look around you and take it all in. The festivity is amazing and the spirit is contagious.
Beyond anything else, I hope the next time you visit, it’s as wonderfully memorable as this trip was. I hope you still pause to memorize the details when you see a beautiful street corner, I hope you excitedly Google every phrase you find graffited somewhere and I hope you meet a stranger that makes you smile. I hope you try something that scares you and do something new that excites you. I hope you’re drinking hot chocolate even if it’s warm outside because no one does it like they do it in Paris, and I hope you’re appreciating the view from the tippy top of the Galeries Lafayette rooftop. But I hope you’re not waiting in line to get into the Louvre. Get those tickets in advance, girl, because any amount of time you have in Paris won’t be enough and you won’t want to spend it waiting in line.
And also I hope you find some more tartiflette because, in case you forget, it’s God’s gift to carb-loving carnivores (and if they only make tartiflette over Christmas, then I guess you’re just going to have to go back over the holidays).
Until the next one,
