SEVENTEEN (Frolicking in France)

Alternate title for this post: When Everything that Could go Wrong, Did go Wrong, and it was Beautiful.

There’s no such thing as a perfect trip to Paris, however romanticized in gold-tinged Sepia tones, eau de toilette’d and otherwise unblemished the city may be in the minds of most Americans—especially (unsurprisingly) those who haven’t yet been. Don’t get me wrong; I am a firm believer in the magic of Paris. That place is so magical, it’s bout fit to burst—ask anyone who has seen the sunset Seine-side from where the île de Saint-Louis drops down to the river, only to climb back up the stone steps after darkness has fallen, crossed the little bridge, and been smacked in the face by the glory of Notre Dame by night. The church is otherworldly at night, once the tourist-hawks’ shops have shuttered, the tourists themselves have gone to their too-small (the website threw around adjectives like “cozy” and “quaint” with abandon, a gilded veneer of the truth: “so small you’ll hate your spouse within 2 days and your kids long before that—p.s. luggage not recommended if you plan on actually sleeping within the confines of the cage, excusez-moi, room) chambres d’hôtel, and the fairy lights have come to life. Ask those who have ventured further on their nightwalk, temporarily occupying a nook on the Pont Neuf to watch the Eiffel Tower sparkling against the dark sky—glittering with less permanence, but more power, than all the multi-faceted gems in the windows at Cartier, that oversized jewel box perched on the Champs-Élysées. Lasting only a handful of minutes, those sparkles—when you finally manage to catch them, running up the stairs of the metro to do so, glancing at your watch and cursing the 6 minute wait for the train—inevitably cause a sharp intake of breath, and then nearly no movement at all until they are gone just as quickly as they came. 

But, like any big city, Paris ain’t no postcard. Behind that pretty exterior hide all the evils of any major metropolis; I’d argue that for some reason, these evils are exacerbated in Paris. The place has a tendency to chew you up and spit you out (perhaps because it knows you’ll always come crawling back?). I’ve certainly been used and abused a time or two…or ten. A particularly painful memory comes to the forefront of my mind, however, involving a severe lack of sleep, two enormous suitcases, a slew of judgmental looks, and my public weeping outside the train station after one of the longest days of my life—but I just keep going back. And every time I do, I feel a rush of comfort, the kind that only comes from returning home after a long time away. The bad times happen, but they happen in PARIS, and that’s the beauty of it. 

So it’s with a sort of rueful, self-deprecating nostalgia that I look back on my most recent stint in the City of Lights (and Darks), which went comically wrong. (Admittedly, the vast majority of the misfortune fell upon my dear Punky, and though I wished it upon myself time and time again, Paris had other plans). I’m going to step carefully around the trouble we had on our trip—maybe it is too soon for it to be comical, I suppose—to get to the point: it was amazing. Never in my life could I have dreamt that we would have a reunion after all that time and under the circumstances, and certainly not one so epic. I use that word in all seriousness; it was really and truly one for the record books.

And where did it begin, and where did it end?

Paris. 

One of our other little nagging problems on the trip was our physical inability to see the sunset. It was the one thing I wanted to do every single day, and for whatever reason, we simply could not get our act together to see it happen! But from night #1, we tried, first on the hill of Montmartre, at the feel of the majestic Sacre Coeur.

Crêpes helped. With all problems. Always.

Picnics too.

We followed the sunshine and headed South, to see my new stomping grounds. That meant lots of hikes and picnics in and around Aix-en-Provence, one wild night in Nice, and even a day trip to my hamlet, D-les-B.

Le Barrage de Bimont, aka a really big dam at the foot of Mt. St Victoire. Hehe, I almost put an n on the end of dam. Guess which word I use more frequently?

Cezanne's mountain, in the...stone

Café au lait & un croissant au chocolat for breakfast--parts of la vie française that are easy to adopt, non?

Conquering the mountain in Digne...

and in Aix. This one was considerably tougher, due to the constant gusts of wind battering us against death-defying cliffs. No big deal.

The view from La Croix de Provence was worth it!

Oh I forgot! We popped by Cannes for the afternoon on the way to Nice, mostly because the film festival was going on and we wanted to see the scene. Didn't see much except for other gawkers, but it was pretty exciting. Also, I got to swim in the Mediterranean! Cannes>Nice on that score, since the beaches there are sand, not rocks.

See for yourself.

But Nice is pretty Nice too! (Apologies. Couldn't help myself). 

The fountains on the big square in Nice; our hostel (Villa Saint Exupery Beach Hostel) was amazing and just around the corner. We were only there for one night, so we scooped up a bunch of people in our dorm and went out together. It was highly successful--9 people in a 10 bed dorm all on a wine-fueled adventure :)

MORAL OF THE STORY: But like, Paris doe.