Visiting Paris has been, for many of us, a right of passage. A life-defining moment. I've been there several times. The first on my honeymoon (Europe on $5 a day, really,) staying just across the river on the Left Bank near the Place San André des Artes staying at the Hotel Eugenie (still there!)
Jerry and I couldn't even afford to sit in a cafe after our prix fixe dinner (lined up with students for the restaurant to open), so after dinner we'd walk along the banks of the Seine and watch the sun set and the light change on the cathedral on the Ile de la Cité. SO
romantic.I remember visiting the Notre Dame with its facade of carved saints outside and extraordinary rose window, climbing the tower and petting a gargoyle as we looked out over Paris.
We walked from there to the Isle Saint Louis, shopping the menus of restaurants we could not afford on our way to splurge on ice cream cones at Bertillhon. The cones were tiny with a ball of ice cream about the size of a golf ball. The taste: an explosion.
Julie Anne Workman [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
We returned years later with our two daughters, nine and fifteen. The cathedral was just as breathtaking. We could just see it from the window of our top-floor room in the ancient Hotel Esmeraelda. We sat in the beautiful garden behind the church, admiring the flying buttresses. Then a repeat pilgrimage across the bridge to the Isle Saint Louis. Bertillhon was still there. It still is.
That's the wonderful thing about Paris. After decades it still feels like Paris. Notre Dame needs its spire back. The city needs its cathedral. I hope it will be there when grandkids to pay their first visit.
What are your memories of Paris?
