Paris.

Before leaving New York, I realized that my bedroom had over the years become an unintentional shrine to France, what with the posters on the walls of Paris and paintings of France, along with a few little statues of the Eiffel Tower that have found their way to me over the years. Like so many other little kids who take French, I’ve dreamed of going to Paris for years, and finally I was lucky enough to see something other than Charles de Gaulle.

We took a train straight from Bethune to Paris and like pretty much every other trip I’ve taken since getting here, I had no plan at all for what I wanted to do. We had some time in the train station while waiting for others to join us, so we looked at a map and saw that Montmartre was a good place to start.

After a really long lunch, we decided to walk around Montmartre and then maybe head somewhere else. We ended up settling in to watch a performer and ended up just soaking in the sunlight and music and that view.

Our train was late in the afternoon, so we headed back to the station and after some frantic switching of my ticket, got on, which is when I had probably the first negative experience during my stay here. A man ended up creeping on my friends and then following us into the next car when we tried to move, a reminder that even though France is awesome, we’re still going to have negative experiences just like anywhere else. Other than that, though, it was a fantastic day and I can’t wait to go back and spend more time there!