Romance in Paris

Paris! The City of love, fashion, food, art and world wonders and a childhood dream of mine. I wanted, so badly, to eat macaroons by the Eiffel tower while wearing a raspberry beret and a black mink coat in the spring as a high class American turned French fashion designer. I wanted to be like Christian Louboutin and make a statement in this world or Olivier Rousteing, and like both, create a product that you can spot and name from a mile away. I wanted to be like Coco Chanel, until I learned of her “involvement” with a German General in WWII (but that’s another story for a different day!), and then I wanted to be like Karl Lagerfeld! So, when I left to study abroad in Morocco and realized how close I actually was to France, I saved up every penny I could so I could visit the city that stole my heart years prior to arrival.

First things first, Pairs was nothing I imagined! It was not the fairytale I envisioned and dreamt about which made me disappointed, mainly within myself, because I was fed an over-romanticized view of Paris which set my expectations for the city WAYYYY too high. While it is a beautiful city, it’s important that you accept Paris for what it is and not for what television tells you. In other words, do not think you’ll experience Paris the way Blair Waldorf would in Gossip Girl, lol.

Starting from the top, I booked a trip to Paris for $237 round trip via Air France (I found the deal on Momondo, per usual) but, traveling from Ifrane, Morocco to Paris is a 2 day trip and I needed a place to stay for a night in Casablanca (where my flight was leaving out of). My friend called a friend, named Hauda who let me stay with her for a night (Moroccans are super nice) and on March 1st of 2017, I made my way to Paris! The trip was simple yet complicated. Casablanca is 4 hours away from Ifrane via Train and I had to catch the train in a city named Meknes, which was an hour away via taxi. In Morocco, inner city taxis cannot travel from city to city, only a Grand Taxi can, which is a van that seats six people and costs $60 to get from city to city. Once the Grand Taxi dropped me off at the MEknes train statin, I paid $20 for a first class seat and waited 45 minutes until my train showed up.

For the entire train ride, I read my book and worked on a essay I had due for my Topics on Gender and Religion course. Everything was going according to plan until I was sexually harassed in my train cabin…. I was sitting in my seat with my jacket on (it was freezing cold) and typing my essay when a man walked into my cabin. Something was off when he walked in, but I thought it was me acting weird because I originally had the entire cabin to myself. After About 30 minutes in the cabin, something still felt weird and I started to hear weird noises from the side of the cabin he was sitting on. I looked over and he was staring at me while masturbating…. and this is a tricky scenario because in the states I could scream and yell and make a scene and someone could help, but since I’m in another country, I couldn’t predict how the scenario would turn out. So, I grabbed my stuff and walked out of the cabin as if i was getting off at the next stop. I messaged a friend who told me to hurry and find a cabin where there are women and children. I was at the back of the train and hurried to find a different when I realized he was following me, found a crowded cabin and then he left me alone. Please, when you travel, especially alone, pay attention to your surroundings and let people know what your every move is.

Moving forward, I arrived in Casablanca around 12am and caught a cab to Hauda’s house where she fed me and talked to me all night. Around 6am, I caught a cab to the Grand Taxi station and caught a Grand Taxi to Mohammed V International Airport, which is where my anxiety went through the roof! In Morocco, it’s common that you’ll see people smoking cigarettes and even more common that you’ll see people smoking hash. A friend of mine rolled a joint for me that I had no need to smoke and didn’t plan on smoking. Well, my dumb ass forgot to leave the joint in my dorm room and I didn’t realize that it was in the pocket of my jeans until My luggage was checked in….. SO! I prayed to God that I wouldn’t get arrested and charged with international drug smuggling over a joint. Every time TSA looked at me weird, I would say to myself “this is it! They caught me!” When I got to my gate I thought they were going to pull me to the side and detain me. And, when I boarded my flight at 10am and arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airpirt, I thought the French TSA were going to arrest me. I went to pick up my luggage and immediately looked inside my jeans’ pocket and there was nothing there……because i actually did leave it at home…… soooooo lets say my anxiety got the best of me and I deadass thought I was going to jail!

Any whoooo, arriving to Paris was amazing. The first thing I did was go to the currency exchange counter and exchange $300 for Euros, about 269 Euros. Please get a receipt and count your money when you exchange it! The woman miscalculated my money and gave me 100 euros less than what I should have gotten so please be cautious (and yes, I went back to get my money). I caught an uber from the airport to my hotel in the Republique. I felt like I was driving through a movie scene and couldn’t peel my eyes away from the window. My hotel was small and next door to a liquor store/flower shop and not too pricey, about $232 for 2 nights. My view was AMAZING. I had a floor to ceiling window that opened up into a small balcony where I had a cute little street view of stone buildings and people riding by on vespas. After I took in the view, we made our way downtown to go shopping! We bought about 20 train tickets for the weekend, took screen shots of directions since we didn’t have service, and like adults we made our way throughout Paris! Getting downtown, we were looking for a mall called the Les Halles and couldn’t quite find it because we were looking for it in the wrong ways. When you think of a mall in any downtown area, you may look around for large buildings amongst buildings, but, this mall was underground. Walking into the mall after finally finding it, there was a large white roof above the opening of the mall and it reminded me of the Sydney Orchestra building in Australia.

For Christmas, my father gifted me a Pandora bracelet and I promised that during my travels I would add charms to the bracelet for every country I visited. Well, i walked into the Pandora store inside the mall, and high key experienced my first round of racism in Europe. No one stopped to ask if I needed help, everyone ignored me when I asked for help even when they noticed the bracelet on my wrist, and I waited in the store for 15 minutes trying to get help. So, I never filled up my bracelet with charms because whenever I think of my bracelet, I think of that specific experience. But, I didn’t want to give up on Paris for that one moment of ignorance! No one was going to take my dream away from me! I did a crazy amount of shopping before we got lunch at a wine bar on the 5th lowest level of the mall next to a movie theater.

After shopping, we decided to walk to the Louvre. On our way, I saw the Eifflel Tower during the beautiful sunset and we stumbled upon a beautiful building that was lit up by lights. From a birds view, the building is shaped like a giant “H.” When we walked to the other side, we saw a glass triangular opening that we presumed was the Louvre and assumed the museum was underground. Walking inside that triangular building and then downstairs, we bought our tickets (with a student discount btw) and noticed that there were multiple entryways into the museum. So, we just randomly picked one, walked up the stairs and past a white statue. The same statue Beyonce danced in front of for the Apeshit music video.

Walking through the Louvre felt like A Night At the Museum. Especially when I saw the fucking Mona Lisa! The side of the building she was in was crowded, and she was concealed by thick bullet proof glass and had a red velvet rope around her. You couldn’t even touch the glass if you wanted to.

One of The most exciting things to see was actually the interior design of the building. There was one hallway whose ceiling was painted similar to Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel, but, it was surrounded in gold. In another hallway, the ceiling and walls were gold and a deep burgundy red. We spent at least an hour or 2 in the museum and never realized that the building we stumbled upon that makes an “H” shape, is the building we’re walking inside of. I was slightly upset because I saw The Wedding Feast of Cana, The Mona Lisa, the Victoire de Damothrace, the Kiss of love statue, basically everything I learned about from high school, but I never saw The Last Supper! But apparently that painting is in Italy so I could only be mad at myself.

It’s important to remember that the Louvre is huge and has art from all around the world. So see as much as you can! Leaving the Louvre, we caught a bus to the Eiffel Tower, but first went to eat food. We found a small cafe on a cute corner and ate pasta that wasn’t really memorable, but we enjoyed ourselves. For desert I had my first REAL PARISIAN MACROONS! After dinner, we walked to the Eiffel Tower which was nothing like we expected. In pictures, you’ll see a beautiful green lawn around the Eiffel Tower, and all we saw were dead trees and horse shit, but we weren’t going to let that ruin our moment. Every 10 minutes, the Eiffel Tower has a light show where the entire tower flashes for about 3 minutes. It felt magical and we kept says “guys, we’re in Paris.”

Walking home, we had to walk across a bridge that was over a lake which also gave us a beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower, but when we got to the other side, I saw something familiar. There was a statue of a Gold flame on the ground as a monument that looked similar to the flame that the Statue Of Liberty holds. So, this flame is called “The Flame of Liberty” and it’s a replica of the torch in NYC. For those who don’t know, the Statue of Liberty, was a gift to the US from France in the 1800’s that shows our alliance with one another. One of my traveling goals is to learn something from about each country and city I visit, so it felt great learning and seeing this piece of history.

This day took every ounce of energy form us + our flights coming into the city, so we went to bed early for the night instead of going out. But, we also agreed to go to Disney Land for the whole day in the morning because we kind of grew bored of Paris. Probably because we didn’t do enough research on what to do in the city, but we couldn’t figure out what else there was to do other than Disney.