Deja Vu

I think I told everyone that visiting Paris was my life-long dream, and it certainly did not disappoint me. It was all that I had imagined because so many of the sights are familiar to anyone who loves movies. In fact, I felt as if I was on a movie set much of the time that we were there. The Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame, the Left Bank, the Pyramid entrance to the Louvre, all are frequently used as backdrops to stories of romance and intrigue. From An American in Paris to French Kiss to The Da Vinci Code, we’ve all experienced these iconic images in film.

Sitting beneath the awning of La Fontaine de Mars on a drizzly evening, I looked out at Parisians walking with umbrellas down rue Sainte Dominique. The women of Paris are chic, and they do carry loaves of bread home in their elegantly clad arms. Our little table had a red and white woven cloth and bistro chairs. Our server was charming. “I feel like I’m on a movie set,” I said to Neil. Was it Julie and Julia?

"Well, we have had a whole bottle of wine,” he offered.

Half of the fun was trying to speak French to the French and trying to figure out the Metro to get to a different part of the city each day. Of course I underestimated the distances between monuments and overestimated what we could accomplish, but we saw the things that mattered most to us. And—we can always go back. Could it be I was recalling Midnight in Paris? I did see it four times. But no, we never managed to stay up to midnight after the miles we walked each day. We did see our fair share of Impressionist paintings and sidewalk cafes. So being in Paris, the City of Lights, was a great experience and very romantic even with my down-to-earth spouse. On our beautiful dinner cruise on the Seine, I was overcome with happiness and told him, “This trip means so much to me.”

“I get it, I get it,” was his uncomfortable reply. But in my mind, he was channeling Rick in Casablanca who tells Ilsa, “We’ll always have Paris.”