Paris

If you're going to do any travel within (or to, or from) France, chances are you'll end up in Paris sooner or later. Because virtually all of the railway lines feed either into or out of the capital, I went there more times than I can count when I was studying abroad. You could write entire novels on Paris (and people have), so I can't in a short blog post do the city justice. But here are some musings from the second time around.

After my redeye flight from Fort de France, I landed in Orly Sud at eleven in the morning on April 28. Though Orly's a pretty unremarkable commune just south of Paris, I still felt a bit like Dorothy Gale as I passed through the modest neighborhoods on the RER. I certainly wasn't in Kansas anymore. The buildings weren't dirty or abandoned! The houses weren't falling apart! Even the plainest suburbs of France were in better shape than the nicest communes of Martinique, it seemed. And the beauty of Paris itself was yet to come. I couldn't have been more thrilled.

But when I stepped off the RER I encountered one of the Parisian traveler's greatest banes --the metro. Though I came to miss the Paris metro when I was in New York weeks later (a comparative post on that later!), anyone who's ever tried to travel in Paris with even a moderate amount of luggage should understand my ordeal -- skinny turnstiles not at at all conducive to shoving a suitcase through, mazelike stations with a hellish number of stairs, and overcrowded cars during the periode de pointe necessitating a lot of clumsy, personal-bubble-invading maneuvers to get in and out. And ticket prices had gone up. Of course.

I'd also forgotten about what happens anytime you're even remotely in the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower (or Montmartre, or the Louvre), thick with tourists (usually obnoxious Americans talking too loudly), when the fake deaf panhandlers and vendeurs prowl the grounds, entreating you to "donate" to their cause or thrusting kitschy Eiffel Tower keychains ("Un euro, un euro, un euro!") in your face at every opportunity.

But don't get me wrong. Though it was chilly (and my Caribbeanized wardrobe didn't have anything appropriate for it), Paris was exactly as I had left it, the musees, the batiments, la Seine. Because I'd already done all the touristy stuff, I focused this time on balader-ing, being leisurely and simply taking in the beauty of the city. I didn't do that nearly enough last time. Because you forget. Pictures remind you of what things look like but not of how majestic the Arc de Triomphe or Notre Dame or the Grand Palais appears when you're standing before it.

My very first time to Paris was in 2009, during study-abroad. It was a January evening and very cold, and I was alone and nervous as I stepped off the RER at the Musee d'Orsay. But the view that greeted me was enough to give me goosebumps. The City of Lights at night is truly something special, a sight to be seen. Oh, my God, I thought, I'm in Paris. It was an emotional moment.

I still think Paris is one of the few cities in the world that lives up to its reputation. On my very last night there just a few weeks ago, as Alice Wang and I stood near the steps of the Sacre Coeur, admiring the lights below, the Eiffel Tower began to sparkle, way off in the distance. All the drunken tourists in Montmartre began to cheer. If you've never had the privilege of seeing this uniquely Parisian spectacle, which happens on the hour after dark, every night, it pretty much looks like the monument is having a seizure. The golden lights suddenly go crazy, kind of like those rapidly-blinking Christmas lights (only way cooler), and it kind of reminds me of one of those sequined showgirl dresses, shimmering under a spotlight. Because it was midnight, we were treated to this display for a full five minutes, instead of the usual one. I suppose all that sparkling could be considered gaudy, but to me it's somehow an irreplaceable constant of Paris, something I saw and looked forward to nearly every time I was there. And as I stared at those glittering lights and said goodbye to the Ville Lumiere for perhaps a long time, I was comforted knowing that they would be there for me the next time, and the next, and the next.