Back to Paris

When I was in Paris a year ago, I fell in love with it. There was a vibe in the city gripped me and didn't let go, but I didn't mind. Even though I could travel anywhere in the city with ease on the metro, I walked everywhere without even noticing the kilometres adding up beneath my feet.

My second time in the city has proved itself to be a little less magical. I landed in Paris this morning after a long but good flight. Since I had been in transit for over 12 hours, I wanted to take an hour or two to ground myself before taking the final train of the day to Lyon for my pre-booked accommodations.

At that point, I was getting close to going without sleep for 24 hours. My brain was processing everything slow. Any small snippets of French I did know were non existent, and my English wasn't doing too well either. I wanted a train reservation to Lyon from Charles de Gaulle that went through Paris so I could stop off and relax. The girl at the ticket desk said it was possible (it wasn't) but since I was indecisive about what time I wanted to go to Lyon, she suggested that I just book it at the Paris train station. I agreed, and took the metro to Gare de Lyon. It took forever, and then I had to waste more time in a long line up. At that point I was informed there were no more reservations available at all for that day, only full priced train tickets. I reluctantly booked one that left an hour later, and then attempted to make my way to the Seine to calm down. That also failed thanks to poor signage and my lack of brain processing power. I ended up walking through a long tunnel that reeked of urine and led in the opposite direction of the river banks. I was frustrated and hot and my bag was starting to get unbearably heavy. I was tempted to just go sit in the train station and wait for the train to take me away. But then I stumbled across Rue de Roland Barthes, which was named after a famous French semiotics theorist who I studied in school and is one of my favourite authors. That calmed me down a little bit, so I went back to a map to re-orient myself, and within 10 minutes I was sitting down along the Seine with other business men and women who came down to eat their lunches. I was sitting near a bridge, and the cover it provided on the river banks made it a host to a small tent city. Between Roland Barthes and the tents, I felt like I had stumbled across two gems that made the whole ordeal in Paris worthwhile.

When I returned to the train station, there were army men in full camo regalia and large semi-automatic rifles walking in threes and staring down everyone in the station. There were also pigeons dive bombing my head, which bothered me more.