Bonjour!
Hubby and I came back from Paris on Friday afternoon. We didn't want to leave. The trip was that amazing. Even though we miss our girls and our pets, we didn't want to leave.
I fell in love with Paris. Hard. We promised ourselves we will be back. It was too glorious. Paris is so filled with treasures, we went from wonder to wonder. And in two weeks, we saw a lot, but we didn't even see it all. So many sights, sounds, smells and tastes. (Oh those croissants at breakfast! I get hungry just thinking about their amazing flaky, buttery yumminess.)
I didn't know how I was going to express how much I loved and enjoyed our trip, until we stopped for ice cream at a Häagen-Dazs ice cream restaurant (yes, ice cream restaurant) on the Champs-Élysées. There we had the most decadent ice cream desserts of our lives. (So decadent that we decided to make it our lunch and only have a light dinner.) But that was not what made me able to sum up the amazement of our trip. No, it was a tiny girl, no more than 5 years old, dressed in a pretty pink and white striped dress, her brown curly hair up in a pony tail, who summed it up for us. We're sitting on the terrace, enjoying our ice cream delight, when she steps out of the wide open restaurant doors. Her parents are just a few steps away at the cash, paying for their ice cream. She's holding a chocolate ice cream cone sprinkled with candy. The ice cream is already melting, dripping on her hand, and she's attempting to lick up the drips and wiping her hand with a napkin with her free hand. She keeps licking away and she's clearly enjoying her treat, when she stops dead in her tracks and takes a moment to look at the cone. And there it comes. "Wow wow wow", she says from the heart, to nobody in particular. And then starts enjoying her frozen concoction again. Her parents come out shortly after and off they go.
My husband and I laughed to ourselves, the only witnesses to such a heartfelt moment.
And that's how we felt about our whole Paris experience. Wow wow wow. Not one, or two, but three wows. If you had seen that little munchkin's face staring at that ice cream, you would have know that that's saying something.
I leave you with a few pictures of Paris. I hope to regale you with stories and more pics in the days and weeks and perhaps months to come, because I took way too many pictures, thinking it would capture everything I felt and experienced while I was there. While it comes close, nothing beats being there and seeing it for oneself.
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| Notre-Dame Cathedral (oh those gargoyles!) |
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| Arc de Triomphe |
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| The star of Paris, la Tour Eiffel, or La Grande Dame, as the Parisians affectionately call her. |
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| Statues outside of the Musée d'Orsay |
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| Medici Fountain, in the Luxembourg Gardens, so romantic! |
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| Flower urn with cherubs in the Luxembourg Gardens, with the Eiffel Tower peeking out in the background |
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| Does it need any introduction? It's red. And it's a mill. |
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| The Gardens at Versailles. Breathtaking. |
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| The Gardens and Fountains at Versailles |
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| The obelisk at Place de la Concorde, with, again, la Grande Dame, and another dame (sorry don't know who she is!) |
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| The Thinker by Rodin, at the Rodin Museum |
Wow wow wow indeed.
