A day in Paris somehow felt like 2, or even 3. It’s no wonder why there are cafes at every corner for that 2nd or 3rd nap you’ve just woken up from. It’s dinner time, usually 8 pm in Paris, but the sun hasn’t even begun setting. I didn’t find myself in Paris because I had intended to. In a way, Paris was calling for me. Maybe it’s because I’m Vietnamese and grew up with parents whose drinking sessions were drowned over with
Paris By Night re-runs, this city wasn’t one that was as magical and romantic as many others have come to know it as, for me.
So, this is probably not anything typical for someone visiting Paris for the first time - but if you find yourself in Paris somehow without trying to, maybe you’ll end up doing some of the things I did too. Despite what you might have assumed from these photos, I was in Paris for pretty much 48 hours. I landed in Paris the first day around 2 pm, and Shun's flight was delayed so I waited at CDG for like 4 hours. Our first day was already somehow shortened, but after checking into our hotel, we found ourselves at
Ober Mamma,
an Italian place with an oak wood tree in the middle of the restaurant that served a mean truffled pasta dish and left me feeling so satisfied with their
special lemon tiramisu. Somehow our 9 pm was just perfectly in sync with the Parisians, and the rounds of drinks and wine put us to sleep really well that night.
We got up relatively early the next morning and took a walk to Buvette, a cafe that I personally also really loved her in New York despite actually never gone with Shun. So, lucky for him, his first time was at their original location. On the way back we stopped by
Musée Gustave Moreau,
an art museum of works by the painter himself, in his personal apartment. Later that day we boarded a flight to
Venice as you might have remembered from my previous photo diary. Paris is quite lovely, but I knew I wanted to see Venice again. At the end of our trip, we came back to Paris. This time a little more adjusted to the European clock. There were several restaurants on our list that we wanted to try, but many of them were closed for the summer.
Grabbing lunch at
Daroco gave us the opportunity to see the Louvre. It was pouring like crazy and no one was sitting around. After almost 6 years of dating Shun, I can finally tell you that he waited for me in the rain (while I set up the self-timer, HAHA). We napped after this of course. And
woke up at Cafe De Flore. We walked all the way to the Eiffel Tower after and saw a lot of people picnicking (it's on my to-do list when I visit Paris again). We thought about waiting for the tower to light up but got hungry while deciding so we headed to
Carbón. We arrived at
Carbón at 8 pm and somehow
ended up having dinner for 5 hours. We're definitely coming back here again, so that's a testament to how good that place is.
The next morning we got breakfast in bed because
Hotel Panache's balcony was so hard to pass up despite my usual neglect to Parisian cliches.
Paris reminded me a lot of Barcelona somehow. Maybe it's the architecture and endless balconies. But, I still kind of prefer tapas a little over escargots. That said, I wouldn't mind going back at all though. There's a charm to Paris that overwhelms you when you're just strolling along the Sienne that's similar to how all the lights at Time Squares makes your heart beat a little faster when you get the chance to look up at night.
lens.
