So, Paris.
It still kind of hurts me to think about the tale, but here it goes.
I need to backtrack a little bit to how this whole Paris trip came to be.
On this study abroad of mine, we were told before we left that we would have a “travel weekend” in which we could go anywhere in Europe if we wanted for a few days. We would just have to have it all approved by my university’s study abroad office at least a week before we left for this travel weekend.
About a week or two before we left, one of the gals in my program emailed everyone saying she was thinking about going to Paris for a day or two during the travel weekend and she wanted to know if anyone was interested in joining her. The idea sounded great, but I had a bad feeling about it, so I asked her a few questions and decided against it.
Then, came that fateful night when she and a few of the other girls (that I had now gotten to know and had become friends with) were discussing their final plans for Paris to send off to the study abroad office for approval. And they convinced me to go with them.
We woke up at the buttcrack of dawn (4:00 AM) to catch our first bus (thank you, Tube Strike) to the station where we got the Chunnel train. After a lot of waiting and being lost in translation, we finally made it to the Metro.
As we got down into the dirtiness that is the Metro, our little group got a bit split up in a large group of people. During which, I felt my backpack tug a bit. And then it happened again. I turned around to see a girl that must have been about fourteen staring at my backpack and her hands were on it. I must have been in shock that it was actually happening because I just kind of said “What?” and tugged away from her grabby hands. I picked up the pace once the crowd cleared and checked my backpack to see if anything was missing. The outside pockets were all opened (which they weren’t before). I then realized that my eyeglasses case was missing. The girl and her friend (that I then noticed) were at the end of the platform that I had just walked away from where I felt her tugging at my backpack.
Still in shock, I told one of my friends what happened while the other two from our group were still figuring out where we needed to be and how to get there. Meanwhile, the girl and her friend were following us. When we moved, they moved. When we stopped, they stopped. Then a really weird thing happened. The girl who was looking in my backpack tried catching my attention to hand my eyeglasses case back to me. I knew something wasn’t right about it, so I just took them from her and didn’t say anything. After that, they continued to follow us for a little while longer and then they just walked away. I thought that they had just given up, but something told me that that definitely wasn’t the case. I checked my jacket pocket where my phone had been. And my phone wasn’t there.
So, that was probably the worst way to start any trip. I tried to not let it get to me as we bounced from monument to monument in those thirty-six hours. But it was really hard for the first eight of those hours to not think about the fact that that just actually happened.
Most of Paris was terrible, but there were a few things that I did enjoy.
We had a delicious three course meal for just 12 Euros at a little cafe, which included a delicious soup full of cheese and baguettes, and there was chocolate mousse for dessert.
The street performers were the classiest I’ve ever seen. There was one cellist outside the Louvre who played with such beautiful passion. It didn’t even bother me that we had just gotten there at closing because otherwise we would not have been able to hear him play. I probably would have been content sitting there all evening.
I happen to have a bucket list of all these bookstores I want to go to in my life. Most of them are in Europe. One of them is in Paris. It’s called Shakespeare and Company. And we went. And I nearly cried. And it was the only place I felt safe in Paris (probably because it’s actually an English bookstore).
Other than that, it wasn’t the greatest experience of my life. And I didn’t “find myself in Paris” like Sabrina Fairchild promised me I could.
Everyone was quite rude and the city was filthy and there was a deep sense of hostility everywhere we went. So, while Paris is cool and all, it only made me love and miss London with every second I wasn’t there taking in the nice people and comfortable vibe of London.
Also, after coming back from Paris and telling everyone about this haunting trip that I had, everyone and their mom has now told me of the awful time they or someone they know has had in Paris. I don’t understand why they couldn’t just tell me before and saved me the drama of gypsies stealing my phone and terribly rude people.
So, the moral of the story is, with all of its awesome monuments and history, Paris is kind of a dump and everyone there will hate you.
So, I wouldn’t bother.
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