It's been way too long since Alek and I last went to Paris together. Paris is not just the most beautiful city in the world to me but also the place where Alek and I met and where we lived 11 years before moving to Los Angeles back in 2008.
One thing that I miss (among an endless list of other things) is taking photos of the city. Los Angeles has some nice photo ops but once you took the blue sky the palm trees the Ocean and the sparkling pools ... you go back taking photos of palm trees, blue sky and ... Oh I almost forgot a favorite of mine, the sexy billboards of Sunset Boulevard.
I was really happy to be in Paris and France for many reasons, our families, our friends, the food, the places, 4 weeks that now seem like a fraction of a second. Which is one of the interesting tricks of life, the past always seems like a fast forward vision and the future is just a distant concept ... which at the end only makes the present real. "Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment" has been a moto of mine for years now.
While bringing comfort to some, I found that nostalgia is not working for me, revisiting the past is not the best way to live the present so even if we have spent some amazing moments in Paris it was time to go back home and hold our loved ones in our arms.
Los Angeles has some incredible restaurants but nothing can compare to the food experience in France. In the South where I am from we eat a lot of duck and foie gras (a delicacy now banned in California, I love this state but it has some weird laws ... anyway ...) steak tartare, os à moelle, aligot, charcuteries, pain au chocolat, crêpes au Nutella I could go on and on all day about the delicious things we ate during those 4 weeks and all the places that I love to go everythine we are in Paris. Angelina for their hot chocolate, Fauchon for their delicious patisseries ... the hardest things is to prioritize ;-)
The other good thing about Paris is that you get to walk a lot, which creates a nice balance between all the food you eat and the calories you burn.
So walking is what we did for days ... along the seine river, the bridges, the gardens, up and down the Haussmanian avenues, the tiny streets ...
Paris was packed with military men here to celebrate the 14 Juillet aka Bastille Day. Unfortunately we could not see the Eiffel Tower fireworks because we went to see Madonna.
After a month away from home it was time to get on the Air France big ass A380 and say au revoir to France ... so did the other 536 passengers onboard our flight.
We travelled on the upper deck and it felt quite intimate, I know it sounds hard to believe but this plane is pretty amazing, super comfortable, relatively quiet, and with lots of space. We only left our seats once to venture to the bar for some Häagen Dazs ice cream ;-P and 12 hours later we were in Los Angeles relaxed and happy to be home again.
