Weekend in Paris

I’ve always had a thing for travel. Even before I had ever traveled. I remember being around nine years old and telling my mom I wanted to visit Paris someday. It’s crazy to think that I’ve now been there twice! I think what most intrigues me about traveling is the prospect of making new friends as well as marking the places I used to watch through a phone screen with delightful memories.

During my time in Paris, I visited many beautiful landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysees, and the Basilica de Sacré-Coeur to name a few. In each of these places, I can recount a memory that’s filled with humorous and joyous events. For example, it was at the park right in front of the Eiffel Tower where my aunt, high school best friend, and I had a little picnic. Only for us to realize we had forgotten a corkscrew. It wasn’t a problem, I simply asked the people sitting next to us whether we could borrow theirs. They handed it over but it was only around the third time I had ever opened a wine bottle; so I wasn’t quite good at it. I ended up asking for help and having a conversation with the girls that were helping me. Turns out one of them was Italian and she was there to visit a friend for the weekend. Of course, I spoke to her in Italian to which she reacted with delight and surprise. It’s always amusing to see people get excited about the fact I can speak Italian. Later that night, we rode scooters around the Eiffel Tower as it illuminated the vicinity we then proceeded to almost run over a rat. If you didn’t already know you will find many many rats roaming the streets of Paris.

Back to my point, it’s engaging and absurd events such as these that make traveling exciting and worthwhile. There’s also always the chance you meet some wonderful people which is exactly what happened to me.

We met up with a Parisian friend of my aunts’ at a bar close to where our Airbnb was situated. There we made friends with almost everyone inside the place. People were friendly and cheerful and we all talked about our life stories. We even met another fellow Latino. This guy was Venezuelan and was the bar owner! He’d been living in Paris for about a decade and was coming from Miami. That’s another crazy thing about traveling you realize your dreams are possible and there are people already living similar lives to the one you envision for yourself.