Since I have gotten married I have been fortunate enough to have traveled to different cities, countries, and continents.  Although I have loved them all, I must confess I felt safer on several of our foreign trips as they were taken with my husband’s maternal family and friends in what, to me, comprised a rather large group.  As I have previously stated, this was our fourth trip to Paris (actually my fourth, my husband’s fifth, and our daughter’s third) and I have always felt as if Paris were my home.  It has never felt “foreign” or different, and I have never felt unsafe.  I have gotten pretty much accosted in the dark, dank alleys of Venice and I was ignored as a woman wandering the narrow, winding streets in Tangiers.  I have roamed over the ankle-turning, uneven cobblestone streets in Guatemala amidst abject poverty and yet never felt threatened.  And I have traveled along the coastal cities of Spain without any qualms.  For me being lost could be terrifying, or it could mean becoming happily immersed in a place with no plan or direction.  Once on the basin of a glacier in Alaska I felt lost due to “white blindness” and it was absolutely paralyzing.  It was like being in a pitch dark room only everything was white — I could not discern the sky from the ground and it made me feel incredibly disoriented as well as claustrophobic.  Milling about the streets of London never made me unsettled; it just didn’t feel like home.  Ah, but my beloved Paris; I have no words.  After the zoo my husband and I decided to spend a leisurely evening revisiting some of our favorite haunts.  Despite this being our little girl’s third trip, she was only five and a half years old, and she kept exclaiming with unbridled glee at every turn.  I realized THIS was really the first trip for her, and I pray she will always remember some of it.  For me, my little picture sums up the simplest and yet most treasured pleasures to be found in Paris.  We ascended all three elevators to the top of the Eiffel Tower.  Our little one held no fear at the steep climb, nor was she daunted by the throngs of people speaking every language imaginable around her.  A sweet young Muslim family shared their little girl’s snacks with her and the French TRULY thought she was one of their own with her deep, brown Gallic eyes, bow, and toile dress.  Afterward we rode the carousels, much to all of our delight.  She had done so twice in the past, but only her father and I remembered.  There are always many African vendors selling their wares underneath the tower.  The vast difference on this trip was that the French police had the entire perimeter of the Eiffel Tower gated.  So there was no more carefree traversing back and forth.  Still, she got this pink Eiffel Tower and we all treated our selves to some glacé au chocolat.  And no one, but no one, does chocolate and/or ice cream like the French.  My husband and I reminded ourselves how nice it was to have a small serving so we could indulge our taste buds rather than our waist lines.  We were never lost, but we did lose ourselves relaxing in the heart of Paris next to the Seine.  The famous American essayist Henry David Thoreau once said, “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.”  I started to understand parts of myself I had never fully realized until my first trip to my beloved France.  I saw my husband starting to really lose himself on this trip in her language, history, art, and culture.  And our little one — the greatest joy of our lives — well, she was truly lost in Paris.

In Dallas while waiting in the Admiral’s Club for our flight to take off we met a delightful man who was taking his granddaughter to Paris for the week.  He was going for both business and pleasure and kept an apartment there.  We struck up a conversation with him, and our girls instantly became friends in the sweet way little girls seem to do.  We were surprised to see the two of them waiting patiently for us to disembark once we’d landed.  They wanted to invite us over to visit and then get out and do something together while we were all in Paris.  I must confess Burk and I are not spontaneous at all; to the contrary we are planners to the nth degree.  I realize that is not necessarily a good thing — it’s just how we are.  This precious man and his sweet granddaughter had offered us an unprecedented kink in our carefully laid plans.  Thankfully — for once — we decided to deviate.  And so, veering from our itinerary, we made our way to their apartment which was situated in a small, quiet courtyard in a lovely arrondissement.  We climbed the narrow stairs to the second level (which the French consider to be the first floor) waiting for our new friends to appear.  They welcomed us in graciously.  It was a Sunday and they had gone to the American Church in Paris that morning.  I found myself wishing we had attended as well; it is something we have yet to do.  As we were visiting, the suggestion came that we all go to the zoo.  Despite all my research, it had never occurred to me to take our little one to the ménagerie!  And so we set out via the Métro, the Paris rapid transit system, which is mostly underground.  Our train however would traverse a cool, clear tunnel with which I was unfamiliar that ran above the Seine.  As we made our way to one of the oldest zoos in the world I would also discover the Jardin des plantes (the main botanical garden in France) was just adjacent.  I recalled from a previous visit to Versailles the medicinal gardens had been transferred to Paris at the request of Marie Antionette.  It was an exceptionally hot day in June but our little group traversed with perserverance.  The zoo, which opened in 1794, looked extremely antiquated, but the animals were all small and were not in inhumane conditions.  Unlike many of its zoological predecessors, it was not all cement and tried to incorporate the natural elements.  I believe it must have been quite progressive in its day.  Of course my great love lies with wolves but the enclosures were too small to have them now.  I did capture this little beauty which is cousin to the wolf — the fox.  We had a wonderful time and parting was a bit sad.  The French novelist Marcel Proust once said, “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”  Walking around the Ménagerie and the Botanical Gardens of Paris with our new friends had definitely made our souls blossom; ironically we had already met them on our own soil — our charming gardners.

We were married in June 2007 and Paris was the place I dared to request, holding my breath, after my impossibly handsome husband-to-be asked where I would like to spend our honeymoon.  I have always been a hopeless, incurable romantic.  Once I even took a test and scored a 100 on a scale for romance.  It did not particularly surprise me, as I had teethed myself on historical romance novels from at least the age of 10.  I could not have known how I would love Paris so.  We were also fortunate enough to have gone to Venice.  What could possibly be a more romantic honeymoon?!  But I would immediately discover my heart was with France.  On the occasion of our tenth wedding anniversary this past summer; our fourth trip to Paris together, I had the unmitigated pleasure of watching my beloved fall in love with her just as he would with another woman — only I held no jealousy.  To the contrary, I was thrilled and my heart was bursting with joy.  I had known the language but saw how eager my beloved was to know it as well.  I watched him view the city with the same dawning endearment which I had learned within myself a decade earlier.  This was not someone merely obliging another on a trip; this was the great love of my life whom I saw truly delighting in the city I love with every fiber of my soul.  It is something which cannnot adequately be put into words.  We both love history, but that could have been Rome.  Yet with each trip I watched him increasingly absorbing and learning the history and culture that was my greatest passion.  I adore Mexico, and Mariachi music remains my favorite … but Paris is a special lady which stands on her own.  This would mark the beginning of ten glorious days in the most romantic city in the world:  Paris — mon amour.