Voyage Parisien

Bonjour Enchanté!

Merci Beaucoup, for being here and taking your time off to read my blog it means a lot.

Je m’appelle Rachel Merwin et J’adore Paris! Yes, I learnt a little bit of French, only cause my office enrolled me to French class which I need to attend and complete by end of August. I pretty much understand a lot of words by now, for example “Sortie” means to Exit and Arette demand means “request to stop”. When I entered Paris, all I knew was “Bonjour” and nothing else, so when I saw “SORTIE” I didn’t even realize it meant exit.

My stay in Paris was relaxing, calming, fresh and invigorating. I entered with no expectations and returned home full of appreciation and joy. I might have written and rewritten this blog a lot of times, as I wanted to do real justice to this beautiful city that I truly loved ever since I was a child.

Paris was my childhood desire or dream so to say. My desire to visit this country might have come from all the romantic movies that showed this place as a place of romance and Eiffel tower a symbol of love. I so remember clearly, when my husband got his first chance to visit Paris, France, I was so mad, and was upset that he is going to the place that I always visioned us to go together. Fast Forward 8 years, I understood that romance is never defined by the place or a tower.

When I held the ticket to Paris, the child inside me was all jumping with joy, but the elder me thought that this place wasoverrated and would never be how I imagined it to be. Also, what is the joy in visiting the city known for romance without your Love? Paris surprised me in ways I never expected.

I was embraced with the most amazing weather, cold temperatures with a windy atmosphere, they called it spring, I have never seen or experienced spring. Trees blossoming with flowers, weather cold and hot. I loved it. Please don’t judge me, I live in Chennai, where it is Summer all year long! My stay in Paris was at “Ibis Paris Meudon Velizy” , which was situated in the country side of Paris,  next to the bus stop “Ermitage de Villebon”, I had to take the bus number 291 or 179, every time I had to travel anywhere. The experience of the travel in bus and train was so lovely, I really enjoyed the travel more than the destination sometimes. Just looking out of the window and seeing the many buildings, people, nature and life just pass by was such a beautiful experience.

They say Paris is magical, I can’t agree more, cause the people and the architecture make it magical, every corner has people singing, people holding hands and just spending time together, having a picnic in the garden, some photoshoots really made me feel like I am in some fairy tale, like the one where I saw a girl walk by with a huge coat and suddenly take them off to show her beautiful pink dress and then she ran towards the Eiffel tower, artists sketching everywhere and beautiful flowers being sold on every street corner and of course proposals happening on the go! If all of this was not enough, there was these lovely cafés, rainy evenings, streets filled with paintings and old chimes, the shops that sell all kinds of wines, the sound of nature that pierces your mind, the free spirited singing and dancing right at the center of the streets, the smell of freshly baked food and so on, made this place a magical paradise. No photographs and no amount of video blogging can make you experience what you experience when you are there.

Somethings I learnt about French people’s culture is that they take their lunch break very seriously, they do long lunch breaks which is usually never accompanied by any kind of phones or distractions. They love their breaks, like it is mentioned in “Emily in Paris”, that they “Work to live not Live to Work”, and yes I did watch this series the minute I landed in France and loved every episode of it, especially the part where in many parts of Paris “AC” is still a word that they are not aware of. The Architecture and the whole way in which the city is planned just blew my mind, its when I stood at the Arc de Triomphe that I realized this was a full circle with the Arc de Triomphe opening up to every road on every side. Their obsession about art is expressed in every nook and corner of their city. While we are talking about Art, I did visit the Louvre and saw all the important art inside the museum, but what amused me is the fact that, “Jesus” was a very famous person in the European Art World, or can I say the entire Western Art World, every 3rd painting would have something off from the Bible. Even the painting right opposite to Monalisa was the painting of the wedding of Canaan and while Monalisa was so so small, the other painting was the biggest in my eyes that I have ever seen in my entire life.

How many of you love the smell of Bakery! Oh, my my, I just love the smell of Bakery, If it was left for me I would have eaten and eaten and eaten just Baked Goods all day long. But no, I live in India where people love Rice and Rotis, and baked goods is the last thing they ever would attempt to eat! Having said that, Paris was my food paradise. It was my food capital. The smell of fresh baked croissant, pain au chocolat, crepes, macaroons, quiches and cookies, oh the cookies here is something else. Jeff de Bruges chocolates just defined my taste for chocolate that I started hating every other big chocolate brands. Macarons from Pierre Hermé or Ladurée is another such a lovely experience that blew my taste buds.  French people sure do know how to cook, and how to do art and everything in between that.

How can I not mention their love for fashion and perfumes. I visited this place called “Fragonard” perfume and the feel of smelling all the perfumes there was an experience I would never forget.

Paris is known as the Fashion capital of the world, with Christian Dior and Coco Channel originating from this place. When in Paris, I saw a lot of videos on the history of Coco Channel and what inspired me was, in the world where every women wore corsets and dressed in a manner that they were asked too even though they couldn’t breathe, she designed clothes that looked similar to how men dressed during that time and was brave enough to sell them for the betterment of women who worked for labor. I so badly wanted to buy the Channel N’5 perfume, but the little tomboyish me didn’t like the complete floral smell of it. A thought that came about while walking down the fashion street, I am not rich enough to afford a Chanel dress or a Dior dress, but what thought provoked me was, would I buy a Chanel dress if I could afford it?  Yet again a thought that came about because I was inspired by the movie “Mrs. Haris goes to Paris”. Whether or not I buy a gorgeous dress from such amazing brands, I decided that I would design and stitch my own clothes to my liking and to not wear or buy anything from fast fashion ever again, even for my children. Clothing is our identity, it’s what defines us, we don’t need large prints and changing fashion to crowd our minds, we need to stop and reason out, what really is our style and be ready to go that extra mile to dress like that.

I guess I have written all I ever did in paris, but would love to end by talking about this lovely person I met in Paris that really made my stay a little more beautiful, she was so full of life, and her story really inspired me to think of life differently and also to realise that sometimes all it takes is for you to believe in yourself and to strive towards what you want, when we do that we unleash a potential within us that we never thought existed!

Nevertheless Paris, you were a dream that came true for me ! I loved every bit of you, good or bad! Would love to visit you again, but until next time ! Au Revoir !