Ahhh, Paris

How does one reflect on a recent trip to Paris? What does one say about a city that has been considered one of the most beautiful and talked about cities in the world for something like the last 2000 years? After all we had heard about Paris, we expected to be both wowed by its beauty and taken with its seeingly irresistable charm. After leaving our wonderful (but all too short) stay in the south of France, we hopped on the TGV and made our way to Paris.

Traveling through France has been an interesting collision of expectations and realities.

After a couple hours on the train, we arrived in Paris and made our way to our hotel. Here was the first of those interesting collisions. Expecting to be taken with the city of light/love, our first impression was rather: wow...this hotel room is maybe a little bigger than our closet was in Taiwan and we don't have any water. That's right, upon waking up our first morning, we discovered that our shower/water system was having some difficulties. For a while it wouldn't work at all...then after some waiting and fiddling with knobs, it wouldn't turn off. So there we were, our first morning in Paris watching the faucet spew out scalding hot water (or ice cold...but nothing in the middle) while we tried everything to get it to stop.

However, once this little obstacle was overcome (the hotel worker gave me a very disapproving frown after I told him about the water and told me, "Wait." He walked away and I never saw him again, but our water problem worked itself out sometime later...guess he was right!), we made our way into the city and we fell in love with it.

Paris is this beautiful and inspiring jewel of a city with open spaces, priceless art, winding alleys and people just walking around searching for the perfect picnic spot. It took only a few minutes of being in the city for our hotel experience to fade away and we were just overcome with gratitude that we were able to see a city like this.

As far as what we "did" in Paris: we walked around, ate croissants, baguettes and cheese, saw many of the sights, spent a day in Versailles wandering through the palace gardens, picnicing almost every night and just enjoying our surroundings.

Versailles!

Here is a typical Luke and Katie meal:
One highlight was spending an evening with a friend who lived in Paris and seeing the city from a Parisian point of view. Just like our experience in the south of France, we enjoyed time being with locals: seeing local places, eating at a local restaruant and enjoying time away from the tourists.

Too soon our time was up and we had to consider where we would be going next. But as we left Paris for the UK, we reflected on the importance of first impressions not being the final say, but rather just the beginning of the story. So in the end, we can really say: Ahhh, Paris!