MINNEAPOLIS › PARIS › KEFLAVÍK

BY MELISSA EHRETfor

MARY WITT

NOTRE-DAME CATHEDRAL

CHÂTEAU de VERSAILLES

THE LOUVRE

Au revoir

Paris

Notes from my journal during our time in France ›

Paris is more than I could’ve known and we’ve only just met. The streets are worn, the store fronts mature. There are shadows on ancient facades, reflections of water ripples from the Seine. Steps are for resting, benches for kissing. There is a loveliness and carefreeness in the way people carry themselves and meet each other and interact.

Parisians do have a way of making us feel insignificant, as if to say, ‘Thanks but no thanks. You don’t deserve Paris because you don’t understand it.’

I have a below-the-surface desire to be here, to fill a void here if there was one. Maybe just to fill a crack in the sidewalk.

Your mouth waters for those strange, packaged waffles and for pastries that are sweet but not too sweet.

You want to sit at cramped cafes with chairs facing the same direction to people watch. You want to smell cigarettes and see tanned collar bones and delicate gold pendants and red lipstick on pale girls and alluring boys with moppy hair and full eyebrows.

THE BLUE LAGOON, ICELAND

THANK YOU FOR THE ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME!

XOXO