Paris

I've been away for a while having adventures in France. Mostly in Paris. Now, I have a love hate relationship with Paris. At the moment I'm loving it but, I've had some really crappy visits there.

The first time I went I got most of the money I had brought along stolen from my hotel room. It was the first night of a 6 week long trip. I was in college at the time and didn't have access to any other money so, I was struggling to get by and eat. Then after a few weeks the hard rubber bit on the bottom of one of my heels came off exposing the hollow inside of my plastic heel. I sounded a lot like a horse. By the end, I was so tired of croque monsieurs.

The next time was lovely. My Grandma and I went and had a fantastic time strolling around eating raspberry tarts and looking at the beautiful old buildings. I loved it.

Then I went again for a holiday with my boyfriend and his son. It was perfectly miserable. I spent the time leading up to the trip trying to devise things for us to do but, was told that it wasn't necessary. We'd be fine just hanging out and the little one would be happy just to do whatever we were doing. WRONG. He was so bored and seemed very intent on making sure we knew it about every 5 minutes. At this point you'd think we would have gone out and done some sight seeing or something, but it was pissing with rain for most of the time. We stayed with friends in there amazing open plan flat and I'm not sure how they put up with us.

That was more than two years ago. I've not really wanted to go back since, though looking at my previous track record with Paris I imagined that the next visit would have to be a good one. Well, it was. We took the Eurostar over on this past Valentine's Day and checked in to a lovely hotel near Saint Germain. The hotel felt like it had a touch of David Lynch about it which I liked. That evening we went out for one of the tastiest meals I think I've ever had and on the way back to our hotel we decided to stop of at Notre Dame. There underneath a beautiful art nouveau street lamp and in front of a beautifully lit Notre Dame my boyfriend asked me to marry him. Wow. Now you may be a bit jaded and think that this is a all too cliched but, I still cry at films and think romance is alive and well. So, I thought it was simply magic.

Once again, Paris has been redeemed.

xx