Whirlwind Across The World
On the 4th of August, 9h55 EST, I hightailed it outta Australia after a great few days spent with friends that I love and someone who I adore in Melbourne. What a great way to say goodbye to Australia - what a better way than going to a cold place so that you can literally shrug off the winter layer by layer as you arrive at the next airport.
Now, I'm sitting cross legged with a bowl of cumin couscous (the only thing I could find in the AirBnb apartment I've booked), gazing out the top storey window at the tower of the Sacré Cœur. I'm in Paris.
This feeling. This weird, unidentifiable feeling that I possess within me - a young child screaming "are we there yet" on the plane crossed with a older woman just keen to be home in her old neighbourhood. When I finally threw my bags from my grip into the bedroom and stepped across to open up the window, I wasn't sure if it was relief, excitement, or confusion as to where I really was after a hell of a lot of travelling.
The apartment is two streets away from my old digs from the last time I was here - living here. When I left, I was clothed with layers upon layers of shirts, sweaters and coats. The sky was as bleak as the colours of the greyish buildings, the trees barren, casting not one shadow. It was a myriad of grey. Not fifty shades, but close to. As I drag myself out of Marcadet-Poissoniers Metro station and the crisp, breezy summer air meets me and opens my eyes from the darkness, I'm greeted with a quiet, tranquil Boulevard Barbes. The buildings are cream, their iron balustrades and red and slate roofs shining cleanly under the blue sky with its jet plane lines and cloudless appearance. There are shadows and reprieves from the scorching sun - the trees are lush and abundantly green. Everything is so different in hue and form but still so perfectly melded together. This is summer in Paris.
Eventually, after a shower and a glug of a gallon of water, I pull myself out of the house with now only a small handbag and begin my ascent up Barbes and across to Pigalle, then down to Opera, then across to Tulleries and then back along Rivoli before crossing to Ile de la Cité and up to the Latin Quarter. Coffees, notebook jottings and aimless wanders later, I am quietly sitting in a side street smack bang in the middle of the city with no one around me. And I'm smiling. I found it. This good thing. This familiarity.
Paris is for everyone that spends their time in and with it, a city specifically for them. I was so happy to be lost in a crowd of off on a side street. Lost in my thoughts, my footsteps, my head tilted upwards to the sky. And it all came back. In just a few short sunny and sunburning hours, it had all come back.
But I'm not alone. I have some insanely wonderful friends that I've met during my stay here who may not be currently in Paris, but are currently in the same time zone. And we've already called each other to chat - to hear each other's voices and giggle about the warm weather and how none of us are really sure what we've got planned for the day because hey, it's summer and summer days figure themselves out, right?
Oh, summer days. Oh Paris. Oh adventure.
