Paris, France has always had the reputation of being “the city of love” and has even been professed by some as being the most romantic city in the world. As to whether that’s overrated or factual, all I can say is that when we first arrived there, love was definitely not the emotion we were feeling. We had arrived in Paris, but our luggage had made it to some other destination unknown, and with all the confusion and futile efforts trying to find them, we missed our transfer to the hotel. We soon learned that in “the city of love”, brotherly love wasn’t necessarily guaranteed as we were charged twice the normal fare, plus a handsome tip I might add, by the very “nice and friendly” taxi driver who drove us to our hotel. The next day, because we still had no clothes, we walked around looking like “I Love Paris” billboards in T-shirts bought from the souvenir stand around the corner from our hotel.
While it was our Anniversary, Paris wasn’t chosen with any romantic notions in mind. It just happened to be one of the stops on our tour, but it also happened to be a time of some significance for the city. In 2008, the year of our visit, the Eiffel Tower was illuminated in blue, with the 12 stars of the European flag on its North face. This was to mark the occasion of the French Presidency of Europe, and ran from June 30 to December 31, 2008. This was also the year that preceded the 120th anniversary of the construction of the Eiffel Tower. In the end, regardless of lost luggage and the less-than-ideal start, we managed to have a great, and yes, romantic time in Paris.
Sincerely Jan 
Oh you were forced to wear the T shirt I Love Paris 😊! A memory forever.
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Yes, and my husband bought the t-shirts so mine was too small 🤣.
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😂
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It’s been a long time since I was in France. I remember enjoying the building and walks a lot, and the bread even more.
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Yes, Europe is a whole different experience, most of the buildings are so historic😊.
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Right? And old house here is forty years old, and old house in Europe is 1400.
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Lost luggage is never fun! I’m glad you had a good time though!
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Thanks, we did.
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Girl I was rolling with laughter! Love was not what u were feeling at first. 😄
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Glad I made you laugh, thanks 😊.
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Beautiful! You had each other – that always helps.💕
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Yes, misery works better with company 🤣.
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Sounds fun now but you might had some tough time after loosing the stuff.
Paris is always a love , thanks for the images and Sharing !!
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Yes, it was pretty frustrating then, at least for a little while. Sharing was my pleasure.
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It’s so funny that you mention your lost luggage because my uncle has the same experience when he went to France. Glad you had a fun time despite that 😊
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Really…wow!! Thanks Pooja, we did!
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This is such a very historic site. Such a great outing. Anita
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Thanks ❤️!
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Limbo luggage sounds like a horrendous experience. I admire people who can cope with difficult situations with a sense of humor (although I suppose the humor of it is realized a long time after the event). Stereotypes and reputations can be very misleading, and sometimes are only based on a song or movie: “I Love Paris In the Spring time… etc.”. But I suppose the full experience is the “thing”. So you can admire the “cake” of Paris but as they say “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” But in French besides having Marie Antoinette’s brioche, they, like we, have a slang word for money — we have “dough” and they have “butter”. As far as “you can’t have your cake and eat it too,” they have the expression “You can’t have both the butter and the money, and the ass of the shopkeeper too.” Ah, but you did have a great time. Amazing. I’ve heard that sometimes French men visit America and come back to Paris to have or sell butter at a bakery:
Buttercup Babe
Visiting America, I met her
in a field of renoncules that
locals call butter cups
She’s my darling Buttercup
a compatriot
She wanted to offer me a partnership
in her business and to share business.
But much ado about love in the dew
and then onward afield ’til
we were back for a romp
under and around
the Arc de Triomphe
to play like tourists and
then marched to her home,
palace of the cuisinière
at the bakery de l’Étoile near Paris.
We homed in on her nest
over the bakery with zest, and
she was hot because the
spice of the day made for
joy and frolic at home
We chilled with a wine
she recommended for the night
and a tête-à-tête with an intimacy
and as our voices modulated to a purr
we unrolled a cloth like a sheet of dough
and my Buttercup
melted in the bed.
We kneaded in layers of joy
to be crisp and flaky like a croissant
In the morning, I left early to buy butter and
I had wondered: what is a croissant
if to do it is not to have it?
I came back uncertain.
I proposed:
My darling Buttercup,
let me keep this butter,
have the bakery, and
I will make you a croissant with love.
Well, she said:
You want the butter and
the money from the butter
and le cul de la crémière…
So you my love, must bring me
a buttercup of the field and I will
peer into your eyes until I decide
if you’re flaky enough to cook.
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Doug you are a riot, did you write that poem 🤣?
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Thanks, yes. I wrote it around 2018. I have around 300 poems I don’t dislike and a bunch I’m not sure about. I experimented with trying to translate some into other languages but got stuck with French because I couldn’t get female subjects to stay female because the gender kept coming from the objects and I couldn’t understand how to do it. And there is no “his” and “hers” that I can see. But anyway, I stumbled across the saying… and so it went from there.
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