A Moveable Feast

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
-Ernest Hemingway

I've returned from staying in Paris and I do have to say I was pretty sad to leave such a incredible city. In the end I managed to blend into the French culture. Taking the buses, the metro, getting lost on the RER, navigating the arrondisements and the plenty of tourists, finding the perfect baguette sandwich (tuna fish with herbs and chopped boiled egg on a crusty baguette, thank you Paul's sandwich shop!), drinking wine (Rose) for lunch and dinner, eating cheese at every meal, taking naps in beautifully sculpted parks, sailing toy wooden boats, visiting some of the most beautiful art work and historic houses in the world and even smelling a bit like the French in the end.

It was a wonderful experience and there were moments of, "I want to move to Paris!" and also moments of, "My French is horrendous!" and stomach cries of "I'm sick of bread and meat and I need to eat more greens!" But overall, the city is quite magical and serene and romantic and full of stories and history and life and the people were friendly and the architecture breathtaking and pastry shops divine!


On my trip I went to Versailles and visited the Petit Trianon, and went to Chateau Malmasion and visited Empress Josephine's country house, and I went to the champagne region and had too much champagne, I spent days in the Louvre and not enough time in the Musée D'Orsay and fell in love with the new Ethnographic museum, Musée Branly. I had wine at sunset along the Seine (sunset was 10pm), I took a boat cruise down the Seine, I had a picnic at the Ile de la Cité (where Notre Dame is) and walked by the Conciergerie, Marie Antoinette's dungeon and I sat in the bars Ernest Hemingway got drunk at and everything was oh so inspiring.

But its hard to say in a posting or when people ask me what Paris was really like. All I can say is you just have to go there. It's a city that lives in the past, that remembers so much of where and how it came to be while at the same time, it is a city that is fighting to be remembered hundreds of years from now . . .

Click here for more pictures :) I am happy to be back in brooklyn!