#41 Paris

In 2008, we booked ourselves ten days in Paris for Christmas and New Year’s. We had illusions of a romantic getaway, but illusions and reality don’t always match. Don’t get me wrong: reality is always better.

We rented an aparthotel in the South of Paris. We were already in the town of Issy Les Moulineaux. Less glamour, but cheaper hotels. We just started walking around as the River Seine was a few hundred meters away.

That was for a couple of days only, because then Janne got sick with a high fever. The rainy weather didn’t help. I had packed a Spanish-French dictionary. There was a local shop not so far owned by an old couple who seemed friendly. I headed there and with the help of my basic French and dictionary, I got some flu tea.

Janne recovered quickly so we made up for lost time. We went to the Eiffel Tower as any tourist would do. Long queues of people waited to go up. We looked at each other: “Do you want to go up?” “No.” Instead we went to look for cafes and restaurants to enjoy. That was our thing: not waiting, but enjoying.

We went to the Louvre and saw the long queues. We just looked at each other, smiled, and asked, “wine?” We did see some famous places, but we wanted to find the hidden spot to enjoy with each other. The best place was a little bar located in Montmatre. In a sunny day, we went up the hill and sat at this place. It was one of the few places where I made a photo of Janne.

We were looking forward to New Year’s fireworks. We walked to one of the bridges over the Seine to watch the show by the Eiffel Tower. People around us were counting down: “Trois! Deux! Un!” Then, nothing. Only dim lights flashed on the Tower. We were not amused.

The best part of the trip was Versailles, the Palace built by Louis XIV. We read daily the train schedule to plan a day there, but then we’d just walk in Paris instead. Fifteen years after we would see Versailles in TV and look at each other to ask, “remember when we went there?” A place we didn’t visit meant so much to us.

Paris was the place where we knew that we could be happy anywhere. It wasn’t about the place. It was about how good we were together.