Bordeaux and Palmiers

I have seen my share of hard winters. After three years at boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts and then two more at university in Toronto, Ontario, I’m not a stranger to snow and cold. Still, there’s something about a winter that is just rainy that is even more depressing than six feet of snow. Lucky me, that’s the kind of winter we had in Paris. Until this past weekend.

This weekend, the sun finally came out, the rain finally stopped, and I finally made my way down to the sixth arrondissement for a walk. Usually, that’s my favorite part of living in a city: wandering around and getting lost on my way to nowhere. But until this week, I hadn’t had the opportunity, which was a shame.

In fact, winter made me resent Paris a little bit. I took this amazing city for granted. I forgot how much I love the trendy 6th, the ritzy 1st, the glamorous 8th, the young 5th… and my home, the 7th.

I live right under the Eiffel Tower. Every night when I first got here, when I would turn the corner onto the tiny street that held my apartment, I would laugh to myself as I saw the Eiffel Tower, lit up against the Paris sky. “I live here,” I said aloud, laughing. And I am not one for talking to myself.

This weekend, as I turned a different corner towards Invalides, on my way home from a glorious afternoon of palmiers and witnessing a speech by Jean-Marie LePen in the 1st (that’s what all the flags are about, by the way), I saw it again. My Tower, in all its glory, peeking out from behind an apartment building at the end of the street. And I laughed.

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