Paris is my hometown (one of them)

I've lived in four places in my life: Pittsburgh, Notre Dame, Angers (my sophomore year abroad), and Washington DC (well now 5, with Lyon). Paris is not one of those places. In reality, if you add up all the times I've visited Paris, it probably only amounts to about 2 weeks total. 2 days here, 3 days there. Yet every time I go, it feels like one of my homes. I have favorite sights to see, some famous with tourists, some not. I navigate the metro like a pro. More importantly, when I go to Paris, I just get that warm feeling of being in a familiar place I love. But of course, every time I go, there is always more to see. As the famous ex-pat Gertrude Stein said, "Paris is my hometown." (Shout out to svaldes for the quote/blog title!)

Before coming to Lyon, I spent a fabulous two days in Paris. It was by far the cheapest and easiest city in FrancePittsburgh to Paris by way of DC, I met up with a friend Michelle. for me to fly into, so how could I not stop? After flying from She is also doing the assistantship program and we met through the program's online forums. We both worked up a decent sweat dragging our massive 50 lb. bags through the airport and across Paris. But we made it, checked into our hostel, and set out to revisit Paris.

We started by wandering around the Marais, a beautiful district of Paris where you can still see the pre-revolutionary homes, streets, and parks of the nobility, such as Victor Hugo. Now the neighborhood is the trendy of home to a vibrant mix of the artist, gay, and Jewish communities in Paris. We grabbed a take away falafel from the most famous falafel stand in Paris, which we ate while people watching in an adorable little park full of Parisians taking their lunch break in the sun.

Place des Vosges: The park in the Marais

Next, we took a walk through the pedestrian only streets in the ritzy district around the Eiffel Tower. Jet lag finally began to catch up with me, so we stopped along Rue Cler (a favorite of travel writer Rick Steves) for a coffee and more people watching. We then continued on to a familiar but unbeatable walk along the Seine River, from the Eiffel Tower all way down to St. Michel and Notre Dame, with a break at the Jardin de Tuileries of the Louvre in between. After a dinner of crepes and pints of Belgian beer sitting in front of Notre Dame, we headed to bed early because we were still exhausted from the jet lag.

A view of the Eiffel Tower from across the Seine