You’ll trip over cobbles and see black-bikinied boobies in display windows. Entertainment comes in all forms – including male fire fighters working out in public on a barge.

Squinting into the sunlight with Notre-Dame Cathedral adorning our backdrop.

Stories in Paris

"The Man With The Missing Beret."

Everyone tells you that Paris is the “city of romance” or that in one way or another, it’s their favourite city (having never seen the Louvre with only Parisian air between your eyeballs and the musée itself). Paris does some awfully strange things to people’s minds – particularly to those who’ve never actually even been there. As an Australian, it’s my obligation to give you the impression that I’m now an honorary expert in French food, history and the French travel experience. I’ll give you an idea (through a long, drawn out series of articles) as to why my taste of France, though entirely void of cheese, escargot and frogs legs, has filled me with a sense of travel lust that one only really gets after being embraced by the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty (a gift from France.. as if you didn't know).

A taste of the Gardens of Versailles. Given enough time, Paris will reveal an inner complexity that comes with patience and an ability to see through the mundane.

My encounter with France began long before I arrived.

No, I’m not talking of the overly romanticised, long-distance relationships people have with a city that featured as the setting of a book they read (erhem Dan Brown readers, I’m looking at you). I’m speaking specifically about the plane ride over. After a good few hours merging cellular masses with the seating at Abu Dhabi airport, we connected with our final leg into Charles de Gaulle airport. The flight in was bound to have a few French people returning home so I sort-of expected to hear some French. I plopped myself down onto my glorified park bench, “now with tray table!” to find myself next to a greying, yet apparently still alert man casually turning pages of the in-flight magazine. During the following hours, this man managed to transform himself from a random stranger to this singular embodiment of France. The only thing he was really missing was a beret. Vivien (formerly, Jean Paul) is an actor and a playwright who had just spent three months living in Nepal to unleash his creative juices to produce another script. This guy was pretty worldly and actually did the stuff that most young people dream of doing before bogging themselves down in deadly-boring nine-to-fives.

Usually I get on a plane with the intention of watching movies and avoiding humans mainly because they’re irritating and occasionally bland at the best of times and I’ll be buggered if I’m going to give them the impression I want to hear them talk for ten hours straight. Long haul flying is an unusual experience insofar as I don’t regularly stay in a space even smaller than my home desk for the best part of an entire day without really moving. Add to that, over a hundred complete strangers ALL with peculiar quirks and intoxicant addictions all within baby-crying range. I’m a pretty patient person, but this requires a special degree of Zen to maintain inner peace. So as you can imagine, meeting and actually liking Viv was quite an effervescent experience. We chatted without too many of those unavoidable awkward pauses for most of the trip. I have his email address (Facebook isn’t his thing, apparently) and he welcomed both Hayley and I to stay with him on our next trip to France. Lesson for newbie travellers – meeting locals can get you cheap, if not free accommodation the next time you're back.

When we arrived, we said our au revoir’s (pronounced ov-wa, NOT or-e-vwa) and headed to the immigration queue at our own pace. The immigration process eventually spat us out into the arrivals area. It was time to hit the metro and get out bodies into the city to absorb the Parisian vibes. We clunked down the broken escalator (walking down broken moving stairs is an other-worldly experience) and onto the train to an awaiting Viv, gleaming, as he clutched his ridiculously outdated press-button phone in his waving hand.

All the best,
Nick

(Welcome back, my beloved Steemians - I haven't forgotten you.)

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