Everybody says that beautiful Paris is the City of Lights,
Art and Love. However, nobody thought to mention that it’s also the city of
copious metro stops that immediately disappear when the sun goes down and your
feet hurt. Despite sleep deprivation, blisters, dehydration and a lack of arch
support, Paris was still a dream. I’ve suffered through two years of French
classes during college, hoping that someday I’d be able to use the beautiful
language. That’s still a goal because I speak French with the clearness and
precision of a 90s-model McDonald’s drive-thru speaker. My communication
subsisted of phrases and present-tense verbiage supplemented by heavy
gesticulation. However, we got around.




The next day we felt much better thanks to getting more than
three hours of sleep. We ate the hostel’s breakfast and I was overjoyed to see
Nutella and baguettes. We headed to Notre Dame Cathedral before grabbing lunch.
Work on Notre Dame Cathedral started in 1163, but wasn’t completed until 1345,
nearly 200 years later. It’s one of the first cathedrals built in the French
Gothic style and it was also one of the first to use flying buttresses, which
were added as a necessary afterthought when the walls
developed stress
fractures during the building process. Everything about the building was
stately and ornate, and I loved walking around it. This was the first Catholic
cathedral I’d visited so far, so that was also neat. It was an extremely popular
destination and we visited on a Saturday, so there was quite the line (queue!)
to get inside the cathedral. It was worth the wait. Next we got lunch at a
nearby café, where I ordered my meal using French with made-up pronunciations.
Somehow the waiter understood and brought everyone the right food, so I called
it a success. Later we found the famous Shakespeare and Company, which is a
cozy bookstore just off the River Seine. Apparently it’s universally considered
perfect because it was so crowded that we had to wait a while before getting
inside. The popularity of the place made me sad, because it looked like one of
those places where the original proprietor really cared about the business and
getting to know customers. There’s the ghost of friendly familiarity in the
building and workers, but it seems like the place is too busy for much more
than a welcoming smile. I prefer bookstores that make it easy to forget where
you are, which is impossible to do when you’re shoulder to shoulder with other
customers. Anyway, it was still a great bookstore and I happily left the place with an additional book weighing down my backpack. After that, my group decided to just explore the city so we meandered through a few side streets and stores. Before heading to catch our train back we made sure to stop at a bakery. I got a cappuccino and a twisted pastry with a cutesy name that made me blush to say it aloud. However I spotted bits of chocolate folded into the pastry puff, so the struggle was worth it.
I headed back to London on a coach at the opposite end of the train from the rest of my group, and then I was treated to schoolchildren playing a heated game of cards. From there I met up with the group and we took London’s Underground train to Heathrow, which took about four times as long as we expected thanks to a mistaken destination and an unexplained train delay. It was a stressful ride through London and it just got worse at the airport. The majority of us were stopped and patted down by TSA but we made it to the gate about five minutes before it was supposed to close, so I guess everything was okay. I finally relaxed after making the flight, and when I stepped foot on the grounds of Collingwood College in Durham, it was with a sense of accomplishment. We all survived the weekend.