Kalihi Girl Meets Paris: What’s the rush?
**Editor’s note: I’m back! After transferring over my site, I lost a lot of the photos that were in my travel blogs. I’ll get those back up someday, but in the meantime, enjoy my newest posts.
If you didn’t already know, I married my best friend of 11 years in February and eight months later, we’re finally on our honeymoon! Planning this trip was stressful because we’re used to doing A LOT on vacation instead of just “relaxing.” We usually want to GO EVERYWHERE and DO EVERYTHING. But Paris seems to have her own agenda.
Prior to coming here, a few people told me they loved Paris. Others warned me it would be smelly, dirty and underwhelming. But Josh and I wanted to see and decide for ourselves and we’re so glad we kept an open mind.
Just as romantic as I imagined
I came off the train and went into the elevator labeled “sortie,” or “exit” in French. I was packed into the back end of the elevator and gasped as I saw the first images of Paris unfold in front of me as the taller people stepped out onto the city sidewalk. The sun was low and cast almost a spotlight towards the Notre Dame Cathedral. Yes, there were lots of tourists, but I hardly focused on them because my eyes were being pulled to everything around me. The beautiful orange fall foliage, the ornate buildings, the grand details of the church and the old architecture flanking the bridges on both sides. We didn’t know where to go first. It started to feel overwhelming, but we realized, why did we feel like we were in a rush?
Then I remembered we had stayed up all night packing. We spent the day before, cleaning. And we rushed through our layovers in Seattle and London. At this moment, the sun began to set and change the colors of the sky. Again, I felt worried that it was going to get too dark for photos and video but the City of Lights seemed to prolong its setting and kept the sun up for a while, as if she was telling me, “no worries, I gotchu.”
And so, we stopped rushing.
Yes, we missed the last admission into the Notre Dame Cathedral, but then we stumbled upon a vendor selling crepes and enjoyed our snack alongside of the River Seine.
Had we rushed to get to The Louvre on the metro, then we wouldn’t have seen the gorgeous sunset from the famous Pont des Arts bridge, known for collecting many “love locks” from couples around the world. (Tons of pad locks were removed since, for safety reasons).
And by the time we got to The Louvre, we actually loved the night lighting much more then we did during sunset. Thank you Paris for the reminder to slow down and enjoy our time here.
