paris

After one remarkably brutal and heroic mugging, the gods of travel graced us with one more day in Paris! In case you missed goose's gripping story, he was pickpocketed* on a metro on our way to the train station, and we were no longer able to leave the country that night. But we did find a lovely hotel with a romantic moonlit terrace that housed us for one last day in the city of love.

Paris did not welcome us with open arms, and on our first day here we wanted to go back to Amsterdam. The traffic was aggressive and the horns too loud. Passersby were rude and pushy, a constant reminder that the world is not "minnesota nice".  The hills were steep and not, as we'd hoped, alive with the sound of music. Instead they were full of vendors pushing mini Eiffel towers into our arms and lined with I heart Paris t-shirts, an aggressive tourism we did not see much of in Amsterdam. Scammers and thieves were on every corner, asking for your signature while they dip into your pockets or tying a string around your finger and then charging to cut it off. But a few mixed days of sunshine and rain in the heart of this city and we came to see it in a new way.

We were helped by strangers on the metro (a metro which Chris mastered immediately, btw, if anyone needs a future guide in France), and became very comfortable in our new neighborhood. We stayed in an excellent hostel, the Peace and Love, that boasted the cheapest beer in town in its bar lobby, and met wonderful travelers from Australia, Canada, Brazil, France, Germany and NYC. We adored the 7th floor windows of our private room that overlooked an excellent view of Parisian life, even though the lack of elevator made us vow each trip never to leave the room again.

We wandered the river Seine, past street artists and kissing couples. We snapped photos of strangers in front of famous sights, and they jovially did the same for us. We took a walking tour from the Latin Quarter to the Eiffel Tower that gave us an appreciation of the past and the present. And we used our last and extra day picknicking with baguettes and wine at the base of the Eiffel Tower (yes, our lives have been plucked from a romantic comedy).

So thank you, thief on the metro*, for giving us one more day and a new love for Parisian life. This happy accident even allowed us a drawing room together on the midnight train to Spain. Thus the bonus of having no plans, nothing to arrive on time for, no one to impress: We can't make any mistakes!
 Thanks for all the well wishes as we head into the Barcelona unknown.
Many missings,
lovefromkt

*side bar: Chris was not pickpocketed. We found his (my) ticket in his pack the next day. But the original story is far more interesting and heroic, so feel free to retain that one.
Note from Chris: I maintain that I was indeed pickpocketed but the criminal decided he had no need to go to Barcelona so he slipped the ticket into a different compartment of my bag. Crafty Parisian thieves