This is my first post in a series of posts that I shall be doing on random memories from my recent trip to World Youth Day. Starting with some thoughts on...
PARIS!
I think my first impression of Paris was rather one of disappointment, I had tried not to envision what it would be like on my way there, tried not to dream about it so I wouldn’t be disappointed if it wasn’t like what I thought it would be. I tried to keep an open mind. But it’s so hard to push from one’s mind all one has ever heard about Paris. Push from one’s mind Madeline and sketchy sepia toned drawings of the Eiffel Tower one has seen. Push from one’s mind Audrey Hepburn saying sentimentally as she listens to the musician on the street “Paris is always a good idea.” And with those pictures in one’s head, like illustrations in some pretty book, it is rather a shock to step out of the airport onto a bus, look out the window and see...just a big city.
“Where,” you wonder as you stare at the strange looking McDonalds across the street and the graffiti (in French ‘tis true) on concrete wall on the side of the road, “Where, is Audrey Hepburn? Where is my magical city of my dreams from so long ago?”
Yet, it is there, you just have to look for it.
It is a big city, a big modern city, which I tend to forget when thinking of it, a big modern and dirty city. Yet the magic portrayed in old movies, storybooks and postcards is there.
Especially at night.
Oh my, our last night in Paris was one I shall never forget! We had been so busy all day, rushing around from one thing to the next, that when we divided into small groups it just became such a relating time. A time where we meandered down the dimming streets and wandered into a few gift shops- not because we needed anything, but because we wanted to look. Even the people on the street had seemed to calm down and relax, no more were the pushing, line cutting, sneering-in-French-at-you, mob bustling around. Everyone seemed in a lazy meandering sort of mood.
We stopped on the side of the street and listened to some musicians singing “What a Wonderful World” and I looked around at the small group of people standing with us, the couple's with their arms around each other, swaying in time with the music, and I felt that I had found my magical Paris.
A leisurely dinner and then short walk to the subway only reaffirmed this feeling. We made it to the Eiffel Tower just before the Eleven o’ clock show.
Did you know that at Eleven o’ clock each night the Eiffel Tower begins to sparkle? And I mean REALLY sparkle. Not just a figurative speech “oh it simply sparkles at Eleven!” It literally sparkles.
It is magical!
We lay down on our backs and looked up at it. Oh it was so beautiful! Like an old time movie. There was even the old time movie romantic couple, who kissed before the Eiffel Tower, how much more romantic can you get?
Oh Paris is beautiful, beautiful with its song “What a Wonderful World,” its small cafés, its sparkling Eiffel Tower, its romantic couple lit up by the light of the glowing Eiffel Tower. Paris is beautiful!
Yet there were things about Paris that frightened me also. The subways at night become rather frightening; people come on the moving subways yelling out something I couldn’t understand in French again and again. It was going to the subways we saw a man snatch a lady’s purse and make off with it. It was going to the subways again we heard these terrifying cries of a man being beaten as the police arrested him. The subways in Paris at night were dark, rather terrifying places. (Just a random thought but it made me think of Black as Night by Regina Doman, though those were the subways of New York, I felt so alike with Blanche sometimes going on the subways in Paris.)
I saw both sides of Paris; the modern, dirty big city, the terrifying dark subways of the night, and the magical beautiful Paris lit up in the dark by a thousand glowing lights.
The Paris of Audrey Hepburn...
The Paris of Audrey Hepburn...
and the "Paris is always a good idea" Paris.
