Paris

Back to my travels and travails. The first weekend – we went to Paris. And I fell in love with the city.

With the metro – with its never-ending passageways linking one platform to the other, with its seemingly complicated routes and directions, the completely unpronounceable names of some of the stations, and the extremely familiar ones of some of the others, but most of all, with the people – blacks and whites, melting into a mass of smartly dressed Parisians.

With the streets – everything one has ever imagined about Paris – it’s all that and more. Roadside cafes, Parisians sitting outside at busy intersections, sipping wine at 3 in the afternoon – completely oblivious to the city zooming past.

With the Seine – and the way it winds its way through the city – like a grand artery.

With the art – that permeates every corner of the city. You can walk from the Notre Dame Church to the Louvre Museum, both imposing structures and brilliant architectural marvels, passing various roadside sketch-artists along the way. The way these well-preserved and historical guardians of the culture of yore gel-in with the contemporary is amazing. You will find palaces and policemen in the same breath.

With the breathtakingly beautiful Eiffel and the heart-stopping view of Paris from the top.

Paris is the romantic capital of the world – two-penny musicians, literally singing for their supper, turn up unexpectedly - at stations, inside the trains, on the streets. Sometimes struggling for attention from people hurrying; at times – surrounded by an audience – encouraging, applauding, and even joining in.

We stayed in this hotel, four of us in the same room, the first of the many, many bunk-bed adventures we experienced – it was great fun. We bought wine, apples and cheese from a supermarket and had that for breakfast. We went to the Louvre, tried to make sense of the masses of paintings and sculptures and clicked pictures of the over-hyped (as per me) MonaLisa. We spent the second night at the station waiting for our early-morning train, and slept on wooden benches in the waiting room. Those were the best of times.

I will come back to Paree, was the last thought inside my head, as the train pulled out of Gare Montparnasse.