It was the best of times… and yup, that about sums it up.  Am I missing something?

I recently spent time in two great European capitals, Paris and London, and have come to this conclusion: I am going to live in both of them… eventually… when I am filthy stinking rich.  After spending a week in Paris and a week and a half in London, I felt as though I had just started to see the city.  Therefore, residence is the only option.  The two cities are so interesting, so different, and my visits to each of them really reflect that.   Paris instills me with feelings of peace and wonder. I remember it fondly with afternoons spent laughing over cups of coffee in chic cafés and long quiet walks through neighborhoods that look they come from 100-year-old impressionist paintings.  On the other hand we have London.  I remember a bustling city, markets with vendors advertising their wears, and bars crowded with students taking advantage of 1.25£ pint night.  This is an account of two great cities through stories, memories and places.

For me, Paris has become an embodiment of all things magical and beautiful about France.  I have heard that it is not really France, that it is an anomaly of the culture and the country.  I have heard tourist horror stories and lists of complaints, but I plan on keeping my rose-colored glasses on.  My Paris isn’t perfect, but it will always be beautiful.  My Paris is complex and interesting and unexpected.  I know it by its monuments; from museums to churches to cemeteries, everything has a story.

The first thing I noticed about the city was the pace.  People walk quickly, briskly one may say, as if they always have somewhere to go; yet my visit quickly resumed a simple pace.  Get up every morning at ten, eat a breakfast of tea and croissants.  Shower, leave at around twelve and go see something.  Later in the afternoon, we grab a coffee, and head to a museum.  Head back to the apartment at about 7 and eat dinner.  Later that night, we would watch a movie, or get a drink, then head home and go to sleep.  My days breezed past as I wondered around Paris, seeing sight after sight.  Even on my second visit, I still had many monuments to check off the list.

On Saturday, I went to the Père Lachaise Cemetery, where icons like Molière, Jim Morrison and Chopin are buried. I spent a good hour wandering about the massive, 120 acre site, looking at crypts and tombstones, each one so different from the next.  I found the grave of Oscar Wilde, and was a bit taken back.  The large concrete block has a winged figure carved into the side, and his names engraved in a simple font.  The grave is covered in hundreds of colorful kisses, flowers and notes of love.  From there, I moved on to Colette, Edit Piaf and Marcel Proust, to name a few.  The next day, I visited the Louvre.  They say everything is bigger in Texas, but visits like these, to old, grand, historic places, make me feel like Europeans are big, ole hypocrites.  Everything about the Louvre screams big!  A museum with 35,000 pieces of art?  No big deal.  With paintings over five times as big as me, and a circulation of nine million people a year, there is nothing small about this place.  You could spend hours, days wandering through the galleries and appreciating room after room of precious artwork.  But after a few hours, I was exhausted and overwhelmed, and decided to get my afternoon cup of tea.

The rest of the week was filled with l’Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, les Halles, Notre Dame, les Invalides, l’Hôtel de Ville and the Montparnasse Cemetery.  But my favorite memory by far was my visit to the Pompidou Center.  I went by myself, the last night of my visit.  I was a bit hurried, arriving at 7:45, when the museum closed at 8:50.  The building is so odd and out of place, an amalgamation of multicolored pipes, about a five minutes walk from Notre Dame.  The Center is a combination of a library, a music center and Europe’s largest modern art museum, which is located on the upper levels of the building. I arrived, quickly bought a ticket, and found the escalator to the galleries.  What they don’t always tell you, a very important fact, is that with the central location of the building, and its great height, the Centre Pompidou offers one of the best views of the city.  Luckily, the architects were clever enough to put the escalators on the sides of the building, covered by large glass tubes, allowing the amazing city view to be observed by all museum-goers.  And luckily for me, I arrived to the 5^th floor just in time to observe the Eiffel Tower, exploding into a serenade of lights as it does every night, and the view took my breath away.  For the next five minutes I stood there, frozen, taking in the view, waiting for the light show to end, and reveling in my little discovery. L’Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, l’Hôtel de Ville and Sacre Coeur were all laid out in front of me, a picturesque summary of the past week and of my past trips.  Soon enough, the lights on the Tower flickered off, and I left to enjoy some modern art.

My time in Paris was like a dream: glamorous, relaxing, cultured, and I was ready to get to London and see what it had to offer.  Being in London was like being in a parallel universe of the States.  Here I was, back again in an Anglophone country, but things were – different.  When I landed in Stanstead, a small city forty-five minutes out of London, I was exhausted and stressed.  I knew it was going to be another hour, at least, until I could meet up with my friends and find a place to stay.  I found the bus that would take me to the city, and boarded, taking one of the last available seats.  It was only until about twenty minutes into the journey that I took time to observe my surroundings, and it was only then that I realized that we were on the left side of the road! For the rest of the trip, I tried to keep it in mind, but even the memory of those first ten minutes didn’t stop me from almost getting run over a few times in the city for looking the wrong way.

Some of the first memories I have were from the bus ride in, as I gazed out the window.  This was my first time in England, and as a self-proclaimed Francophile, I had never made much of an effort to learn about London.  I was visiting with a blank slate, a fresh page, so to speak, and it was quite interesting to build my impressions from scratch.  I had of course asked my trendy London friend, Ned, for guidance, and so for the rest of the week I wandered around the city, with an unlimited travel card in one hand, and a list of his recommendations in the other.  With each place checked off the list, I grew fonder and fonder of this Bizarro World.  After seven days I had passed, I managed to visit every place recommended by Ned, and a few others on top of that.

By far, my favorite places were the markets.  Each has their own distinct character, but they are all absolutely delightful.  First, I did the South Bank Walk, working my way from west to east, ending at the Borough Market.  Several stalls, covered by bright red canopies, where vendors were offering samples to passerbys, greeted me.  There were all sorts of food: buckets of pickled olives, cheeses from every corner of the world, pestos, dried meats, cookies, cakes and pies.  My mouth watered with everything I saw, as I was offered curries, brownies, and apple slices to try.  I settled on buying an almond pastry, and inhaled it as I explored the sprawling market.  And I was only at the entrance.  I followed the crowd, through a tunnel, and found another square, and another one beyond that.  I spent a good two hours there, circling the grounds, and taking in the liveliness and excitement of the place.  The next day I headed over to Camden Town.  On the tube, I wondered what I would find, and I was not disappointed.  As soon as I stepped out of the station, I knew I had come to the right place.  Crowds and crowds of people walked past the colorful and eclectic buildings that lined the streets.  Shop after shop sold jewelry, tee shirts and souvenirs.  I continued down the way to find blocks of stands and stalls.  There were so many choices to takes in, markets upon market.  I found a food area, comfortably located on a little river, and bought some bite-size samosas, and munched on them as I explored some more.  I also visited Notting Hill, Shoreditch, Oxford Circus and Russell Square.  I visited Hyde Park, Hampstead Heath, Buckingham Palace, the London Bridge, the London Towers, and Platform 9 ¾.  I was a super-traveler. Neither wind nor rain could stop me; I was on a mission.  I ran all over London, and even traveled to Oxford for a few days.  But after almost two weeks in England, I was exhausted and very ready to return home, to small, quiet Strasbourg.