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Published: June 18th 2009
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It is a strange experience going back to a city you once visited years ago. You hold particular expectations and hold onto fond memories and sensations that you cannot quite let go of. It is really disappointing to fall out of love with a city you once fell in love with.
I first visited Paris 9 years ago when my father had to attend a conference and decided to bring our family there for 10 days to make a family holiday out of it. One of the last family holidays we had together, I was allowed to plan each day and prepared a rigorous and cultural 10-day journey for us. We did anything and everything on the tourist routes and more in those 10 days, and by the end of it I really felt like a little Parisian kid. We ate delicious food and were served by friendly locals and visited life-changing art galleries and museums.
Almost a decade later, Aaron and I arrived at Paris Gare Du Nord in rain-drenched style, hauling our heavy backpacks across the kilometer-long terminal in search for our $60/night hostel. We knew Paris was going to be expensive, but I didn’t think
things had changed that much in 10 years. Boy, was I wrong.
I dragged Aaron to visit the Centre Georges Pompidou, the contemporary art gallery that I as an un-cultured 14 year old teenager first learnt about the likes of Marcel Duchamp and contemporary installation art. This changed my view on art and my outlook on life as a teenager and I was hoping for a similar experience as a young adult. I should have known better, and to not associate new experiences with past memories. The art was un-inspiring and the museum very run down.
The redeeming feature of our soiree in Paris was the fact that we met up again with Aaron’s mother and his Nan. Anne kindly bought Aaron and I tickets for a double-decker tourist bus that took us around the city on various routes, and it was actually really nice to just sit back and enjoy the sights on a superficial level without having to deal with metro maps and lonely planet guides and nagivate ourselves around this metropolis.
They say Parisians are unfriendly people, and we do not like to cast generalizations on an entire city of people, especially without experiencing
it first-hand. But I have to say that we had 2 of our most unfriendly encounters in Paris. The first was a metro station attendant, a woman who refused to speak in English even though she fully understood what I was saying, and then refused to serve me. Then a taxi driver blew a raspberry at me because I did not pronounce “Les Halles” to perfection. He blew a raspberry. Who the F&%! does that!?!
With our Paris experience tainted by these rude locals and the miserable weather, we bid a final farewell to Anne and Nan, and caught the Eurostar back to London for a brief interlude with the public transport network before our connecting flight to Reykjavik.
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Elise
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Hey precious one's I was sorry to read Paris did not live up to some expectations but lived up to the expectation of the rudeness!!! It would have been so lovely to spend some more time with Anne and Nan Im glad u both got too =). I love ur photo of pyramid at louvre, it's gorgeous and I also love the one as Anne dressed as Mary....very cute =) Love u boys!!! Mis u both heaps!!! xXx