Down and Out in London and Paris
Friday, May 20th, 2005 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranthHave just had a fun fortnight with Exotic Internet Visitor, who is now on her long way home. We rounded off the trip with a few days in Paris (of which more, possibly, later). I've been musing on why I haven't been to Paris for 15 years, and it's the same reason that it was fun to be there with L.
I have a set of complex and not entirely happy memories of the city, based on multiple visits as a child when I was 'shown the sights' by my cousins, who in retrospect didn't have much idea of what would interest me. (If they took me to those things now, I'd love them: but I was a badly-socialised pre-teen with no interest in history. And now, I've almost entirely lost touch with that side of the family.) The last time I went was with my father, when he was already ill: terribly frustrating and not especially enjoyable. The last time he went was with my niece: I couldn't go, and have felt increasingly guilty about this ever since. (Nowadays, getting him out to the car for a drive is a huge achievement.)
So it was lovely to return to a city I have fragmentary memories of, and stitch those memories together, and overlay them with new, fun, grown-up ones: kir in a bar opposite the Moulin Rouge, McDonalds chips by night on the banks of the Seine, running away from American tourists, tombs tombs tombs. (Offenbach, Napoleon, Henry II).
Did not do Tour Eiffel / Arc de Triomphe / Galeries Lafayette / Louvre. But we did manage a mini Baroque Cycle tour.
Sleepy now.
I have a set of complex and not entirely happy memories of the city, based on multiple visits as a child when I was 'shown the sights' by my cousins, who in retrospect didn't have much idea of what would interest me. (If they took me to those things now, I'd love them: but I was a badly-socialised pre-teen with no interest in history. And now, I've almost entirely lost touch with that side of the family.) The last time I went was with my father, when he was already ill: terribly frustrating and not especially enjoyable. The last time he went was with my niece: I couldn't go, and have felt increasingly guilty about this ever since. (Nowadays, getting him out to the car for a drive is a huge achievement.)
So it was lovely to return to a city I have fragmentary memories of, and stitch those memories together, and overlay them with new, fun, grown-up ones: kir in a bar opposite the Moulin Rouge, McDonalds chips by night on the banks of the Seine, running away from American tourists, tombs tombs tombs. (Offenbach, Napoleon, Henry II).
Did not do Tour Eiffel / Arc de Triomphe / Galeries Lafayette / Louvre. But we did manage a mini Baroque Cycle tour.
Sleepy now.
