Adventuring, Part 1: C'est la vie.

The best part about traveling outside the States is that everyone you meet prior to your departure is SO excited for you. People in line at your cafe, the girl who waxes your eyebrows, the lady stamping your boarding pass, all the lovely people at every checkpoint inside the airport, and fellow travelers waiting in the terminal to go someplace less exotic (like Shreveport or Denver). Every interaction causes your own excitement level to rise, until you are sitting in the mid-cabin window seat on a trans-Altlantic flight from the City of Brotherly Love, USA to the City of Love, France.

Paris.

I have dreamed and schemed about Europe since I was twelve. The dream grew from the combination of a love of historic literature, an obsession with European royalty, and the runaway imagination of a romantic girl with very big life plans. You would think, then, that when my little sister said "Come to Europe with me this summer," I would have said YES PLEASE SIGN ME UP immediately. But I did that thing that responsible adults are supposed to do, which is to shake their heads woefully at the smallness of the bank account and wax on about the importance of saving money. Thankfully for me, I'm not as responsible as I should be, and my thirst for adventure has not dwindled nearly as much as my finances.

Paris is completely as magical as you would think. One moment you're walking along the Seine, your head buried in a metro map that makes little to no sense, and then you look up and the freaking Notre Dame is majestically looming above your head. We were living in a postcard. Or a movie, or some other reality that was so far removed from my norm, I felt like I'd entered an alternate universe.

The other best part about traveling is that it makes the world seem exponentially bigger. My sister and I talked about that a lot as we got totally lost wandered around Paris. There is so much adventure to be had. So much going on in the world that we never knew about. So many people to know. Instead of a fancy hotel (20-somethings backpacking Europe DO NOT have the luxury even of Priceline), or a hostel (Sorry, I'm not that adventurous), Sister and I stayed with a precious French couple we found via the internet (sounds way sketchier than it was, I promise). So, for $60 a night, we got a pull-out couch, a 2x2 shower, and a gigantic old-fashioned key that upped our fancy European factor by 1000. We were two minutes from the metro, and five minutes from the grocery store, where we bought our fair share of baguettes and fruit. Because, when you're in Europe on a budget, baguettes and fruit are maybe your best option. And coffee.

I think the defining moment of Paris was our last night there. We had spent a jam-packed day touring Versailles (after getting lost, missing the train, and losing Sister's cell phone. We also canoed around the lake, which is definitely more a couples' activity and way less romantic when neither canoe occupant knows how to row), and taken a whirlwind run through the Louvre. It was time to end Paris with a bang, despite the fact that we had walked 23748932 miles that day and probably could have just gone for a nap. But Paris has a reviving effect on one's store of reserve energy, so we found it within ourselves to buy a three-Euro bottle of wine, lavender chocolate, and two metro tickets to the Champ de Mars, Tour Eiffel.

Okay, whatever, it is merely a tourist attraction and you wouldn't catch a Parisian within 100 feet of it and it's not even that cool I KNOW. But, actually, it IS that cool and the sheer amount of exuberance surrounding the Eiffel Tower makes a person want to skip with joy. As it happened, a couple of Sister's college friends were also in town (small world, much?), so we sat down with them on thin little fake blankets they had stolen off the plane (brilliant) and waited for some charming gentleman with a bottle opener to assist us with our wine. I know, right? What were we thinking? But this is Paris, y'all, and not twenty minutes later we were approached three guys from Colorado who just so happened to have a bottle opener. Thanks, guys.

So there we were. Seven American twenty-somethings, in Paris, sitting at the foot of the Eiffel Tower as it shimmered and sparkled in the just-darkened sky. It was a moment of absolute wonder, in which we all took a big breath and relaxed into the reality of our extreme good fortune, and total contentment. Moments like that are hard to come by.

As we packed up to head our separate ways, Scott From Colorado said, "I mean we just spent an evening under the Eiffel Tower, so we're all basically in love, right?" To which I replied, "Obviously. I wish we didn't have a train to catch tomorrow, or else we would stay longer."

And he said, "Ehh, no worries. We'll always have Paris."