J'ai Deux Amours, Mon Petit Ami et Paris....

And last week, we were all together, my deux amours and me!

I met Forrest at the crack of dawn on October 30th at Charles de Gaulle, and I saw him off well before the crack of dawn on November 8th at Orly. In between we ate a lot of Nutella, saw a lot of Parisian stuff, and were really sappy. I know what you're thinking. Ew gross! Young love! No one wants to hear about that! Well SUCK IT. I am writing a post about it, and you just have to deal.

It was really cool having someone to show around Paris who had never been here before, because after a few months here it is too easy to justify staying home and knitting all day or just going straight back to bed after a difficult morning class. I feel like I've seen all the major monuments and museums, and sometimes I just feel like sleeping and watching TV. Which is fine sometimes, but it was so refreshing to have someone here to snap me out of it!

Anyway, we mostly went to places I'd been to before, because Forrest was here for a short time, so we took kind of a crash course tour of Paris. We hit all the big stuff:

The Seine

Hotel de Ville

Luxembourg Gardens

The Pantheon

The Arc de Triomphe

The Louvre

The Musée d'Orsay

The Tubey Museum

Sacré Coeur

...I forget where this is.

It's funny being this touristy again. I always feel like I'm somewhat better than your average tourist. I can pass for French, as long as I don't open my mouth. (Once or twice I've even passed as French for a whole sentence!) I keep my camera tucked away, my map folded up at the bottom of my purse, and I've yet to buy anything with an image of the Eiffel Tower on it. But at the end of the day, I'm kind of just a tourist. I take pictures of famous things, I'm still delighted by street musicians with accordions, and I struggle awkwardly when ordering coffee. It's always nice when something forces me to embrace my true nature, like Forrest's visit. I realized that it's okay for me to just be a tourist sometimes. If people talk to me they can find out that I am studying their culture and their language like crazy and trying to get something more out of this trip than a hideous purple "I <3 Paris" sweatshirt. And if they don't talk to me, it doesn't really matter if they think I'm a stupid American who doesn't know a boulangerie from a patisserie. They're just grouchy. So I'm going to wear my camera proudly for a while. Because I really like taking photographs of cool looking things, and tourist attractions are pretty cool looking.

Got a little side tracked there, sorry. Point is, Forrest was here and it was awesome. And a visit from a loved one is exactly what I needed. It made me way more excited to see all the best that Paris has to offer, and it also made me pretty psyched to see ALL OF MY LOVED ONES in about a month!