Monday, March 05, 2007

Retracing old steps

It was my first time back in Paris since we'd left definitively about a year ago. Whereas once I was cynical enough to be rolling my eyes at the enchanted tourists, I was myself finally able to appreciate it again for the city that it can be. The edges of bad memories of being pushed and shoved about in the metro softened by observing people actually being courteous, by not riding the peak hour lines or times, by not having to be anywhere at a particular time (except for the train station Anne, except for the train station... :p)
It wasn't only the harsh memories that got a bit fuzzy, but the general layout of several areas also. Doesn't help when you lose your Paris pocket map book either and you're relying on a department store map that thought putting in names of metro stations was less important than inserting very large not to scale images of where their store was located. Still, enough tourists seemed to consider that I looked like I knew where I was going well enough to ask for direction. So the reason for the visit was nothing more than an escape from solo boredom. Ben had a training course (can we say free hotel room with breakfast?) so rather than sitting about bored and pretending to keep busy for a week, I figured I might as well dust off the camera and take a tour. And get free breakfast.

1 comment:

anne said...

oh come on. a little bit of excitement and rush never did anyone no harm, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, etc. Heh.