Last Flight Home

I am filled with wonderful memories of Paris lately. Since planning for Aurore’s dinner party I’ve gotten many of my Paris souvenir’s out from my previous trips to be used as decor for the apartment, and they just brought me so much memories.

My first trip to Paris was back in 2009, after I had just been newly engaged. I was surprised, not pleasantly, that my future mother in law and sister in law were about to welcome me at the Charles de Gaulle airport. It was the first time I were to meet them, the plan originally was that Jannik were to pick me up (sans any family member) and I were to get my self presentable enough in our hotel room prior to meeting his mother and sister — saving my ‘I’ve been up for 21-hours face’. My torn up traveling pants were not the outfit I had preferred on my first encounter with the in laws. But nervous as a wreck, they had me feel so at ease because they were just the sweetest… I’ve been in love with them since I met them in Paris.

Me and my then fiancé, Jannik, met in Paris to spend a week together before flying en route Copenhagen to meet the rest of the family. After which, we had scheduled a trip to Madrid as well.

That was my first trip to Europe in general. Days that followed were an array of beautiful picturesque moments, consisting of the loveliest evenings I’ve had in all of my adult life.

My first snapshots of Paris back in 2009…

This is Cafe Augustin. My first trip in Paris was in August, it was in a hotel a few blocks away from this cafe at rue Batignolles. Every morning we’d walk to the bakery nearby and pick up fresh baked chocolate croissants and sit in this cafe as we people watch sipping our coffees. It became somewhat our tradition, we had been walking to this same cafe the next times we had been in Paris.

A sweet welcome present from my mother in law.

More photos of my first trip to Paris

Look how easy it is for me to spot my man from a crowded cafe. There’s always something neon in his choice of footwear :)

The Pont Neuf bridge will always be a favorite spot of mine. We kissed many times here as the book recommends, if that ain’t cheesy enough for you, I know… but it’s Paris! Besides, we’re tourists, we’re licensed to be cheesy.

Speaking of tourists, I love waving to boats full of them they pass through the river Seine. I get a kick out of that because they all (almost) always wave back.

I will never tire of watching the sparkling Eiffel at night.

Nowadays I find myself maneuvering my steps through cobblestones in five inch heels like a pro, having known how not to trip on my high-heeled boots. I stroll along never minding the sound of the violin being played in the background, usually by a man whose hat lays on the ground awaiting some spare change. I’m annoyingly shooing pigeons away sitting at a cafe in long afternoons when I used to love taking photos of them not long ago…

I find that I live in surroundings that can easily rival a Hallmark card and I’m afraid it had been strewn into my dailies like a huge ball of routine, so much so that I’m getting less enthralled by it. I have lost my “tourist” point of view, and I miss how that felt.

The eagerness, that shriek of excitement inside of me when I first set foot in Paris and caught sight of the Eiffel in the skyline, for example. Or the first time I saw huge pots of pastel colored tulips in Copenhagen’s streets, the sight of white swans swimming in lakes that you can find in quaint little towns of Denmark. Or the thrill of my first night out feasting on tapas in one of the busiest streets in Madrid. These once surreal moments have become part of my everyday life now, and sometimes I really like reminiscing how it all felt to me in the beginning. Photos help remind me of that feeling, it even reminds me of how each of these cities smell!

Nostalgia is a powerful thing; a wistful desire to return in thought.