So, I’m the luckiest girl in the world and my best friend works at Delta. Which means she flies standby for free and her friends fly for cheap (hint: I’m a friend). Her husband had a week off before his new job, so us three + Dawn decided to take off (luckily we all had passports). 

We originally tried for Rome, but out of over 300 passengers, every single one of them showed up (which doesn’t happen often). So we tried for a Paris flight later that night. No dice. Instead of leaving the airport in defeat (and having to leave and come back and go through security again), we saw a decently empty 10:30pm flight to Raleigh, NC and we took it, since Delta just started direct flights from Raleigh to Paris and all the flights for the next day looked EMPTY.

We headed to Raleigh, hung out in a very empty city on Labor Day (apparently the entire town got shwasted at a festival together the night before), played some Harry Potter uno at the airport and successfully got on a flight to Paris (and got upgraded to Delta One, fanciest I’ve ever felt in a stretchy romper).

We arrived the next morning after 2 hours of plane sleep (even first class plane sleep is still plane sleep) to a very hot airport with gross bathrooms, a long customs line, and super confusing train signage. But other than that, the whole je-ne-parle-pas-francias thing, and the whole 6-hour-time-change-2-hours-of-sleep thing, Paris was an absolute dream.

Our hotel room was ready early: up the tightest spiral staircase I’ve ever climbed, no AC, terrible wifi, and a shower built into the bathroom itself (so the whole bathroom was wet all the time), but it was still incredibly dreamy. We always kept the window open, so a nice 60 degree breeze was blowing through along with muffled city noise. We took it in for a while, freshened up, charged up, and took off.

I’m not sure if it was from lack of sleep, but when I say Paris was dreamy, it really felt like a dream sequence. You’re strolling along the Seine, and you stumble upon on of the new bridges for lover’s locks. Then, there’s a floating bar covered in beautiful greenery steps from the castle-turned-French-Revolution prison, because of course there is. You walk across the street to a beautiful park with French children playing with gigantic bubbles kind people are making with fishing poles. Then, around the corner, there’s to just one but THREE rows of the most beautiful greenhouses on streets lined with mopeds. And because this is a dream and there are no rules, one block from that is the Notre Dame, which blew your Disney-child-art-history-loving mind. And there’s bread and chocolate and it’s 65 degrees with a breeze and everything is beautiful. I’m still in awe.

By this point we were absolutely tuckered out, so we waffled a bit on dinner but ultimately decided to get random food at a grocery store on the way back to the hotel. We ended up all getting different flavors of the same cookie. We passed out in a big way at like 8pm.

I will never forget the next morning. I was the first one up at about 5:30, and it was still dark out and it was a bit chilly in the room (I checked the weather and it was 57, which it was in the whole room since we left the window open). I walked over to the window alcove and sat there for a while. I could barely made out the edges of buildings and the sun began to rise. It was so incredibly peaceful and romantic and I almost cried (I’m a 4 on the enneagram so this is expected).

We headed out to breakfast (like all our culinary encounters in Paris, we ordered and ate whatever we were the most likely to be able to pronounce) and then to the Louvre. We split up and did this one individually, since we’re half bees and half yellow jackets and have pretty different interests. Shocker of shockers, I almost cried again at the Louvre. Y’all, it was so overwhelming. I had the chance to see most of the pieces I learned about in person. It’s a humbling thing to have your face inches from the canvas, being able to see brush strokes, and realizing that David (or Ingres or Gericault or so many others) saw that exact same view countless times.  The awe didn’t stop there: the building and views from it was just as incredible as the pieces inside. I could stay there for a week and not be done taking it in.

Dawn and I then hit two more museums: the one I don’t remember the name of where you’re surrounded by Monet (which was incredible) and my favorite building in the world, the Musee d’Orsay. It’s a repurposed train station with the most interesting interior (think American Magical Congress building from Fantastic Beasts), a top floor with giant clock windows (think Hugo), and roof access. Oh, and a fancy chandelier room (think Doctor Who: The Girl in the Fireplace) and Van Gogh (think, well, history). Did not want to leave ever.

But leave we did. We trekked straight down the Seine to the Eiffel Tower and bought a ticket to the top (which was 12 euros with the 12-24 year old adolescent discount, US takes notes). We took the elevator up to the middle, which was cool. Then the very top, which was cold. In all seriousness, it was freezing and super windy and I definitely facetimed my mom to scare her. But it was beautiful. Paris is so, so spread out. Unlike other large cities, there are only a few ‘city’-looking skyscrapers, the rest of the buildings are the same (with streets that make ABSOLUTELY no sense but that’s a different story) and only about 4 stories high, which means there’s more of them. Even from the top of the Eiffel tower we couldn’t see the end.

The next day, Dawn and I were on our own, so naturally we went to Montmarte, the artsy part of Paris (as if it’s not all artsy). We fell in love. It was much less touristy and more low-key than the area near the Siene. The bakeries and shops were absolutely adorable. The streets and buildings were absolutely picture perfect. Sacre-Coeur (and the view from it) was beyond words.  We had lunch in the middle of the street, on a hill, overlooking Paris. Street musicians. Empty streets. Vintage bookstores. macarons. Mid-day suitwearers parades. Thrift stores. Hills and croissants and vespas. I escape there in my mind about every other day.

We then headed back to where we were staying, found out the best bakery in Paris (which is logically probably one of the best anywhere) was like 2 blocks away, got 2 of their last 8 croissants, got some 5 dollar peach wine from a grocery store, and headed to some grungy, small river to partake (it was way closer than the Seine and we were SUPER tired), and then went back to the room and watched Spider-man in French. Perfect end to a perfect trip.