Ah, but there is no summer quite like the Parisian summer. Sweaty, smelly and blistering, but also a season for sitting on one of the many restaurant terraces with a glass of white wine, or mojito.
The casual people-watcher can spot the fashionistas in their designer summer dresses, the children already tanned gold, the cooing pigeons and the tourists. Paris is a city for walking, and since most of the metro lines are positively sulfuric in the heat, everyone is out on the street, seeing and being seen.
I love it. And I had forgotten how much.
What a joy to be back! Just a short visit, but I returned to Paris for the weekend, to visit N, who is ploughing through the final leg of his PhD. After a romantic year together living in the green Parisian suburbs, our times together are at the moment fleeting snatches of days and hours. They are times that have to be made the most of.
So we did. Off the plane and into the city, we went for an early lunch in one of the Chinese restaurants scattered about St-Michel. They are inexpensive, but our tradition. Our favourite is on the first floor and overlooks a crossroads – a good place to observe the world passing by without suffering the waves of car fumes and city dust.
I consumed Paris voraciously in my first few months there, and since N has lived in the city on and off for the past six years, it’s safe to see we’ve seen a lot of what there is to see. But the lovely thing about Paris is that there is always more to take in. And new ways to take it in, for that matter.
Download the ‘Dott’ app (‘Lime’ is also popular), and for a euro you can unlock one of the many motorised scooters dotted about the city. They cost 15 cents per minute, and coast along at a pace to match most of the traffic. On sunny days, when the walking is an ask, but you still want to see it all, these scooters make it possible.
And the best bit is that after zooming about, snapping the sights with the wind in your hair, you can finish the ride and leave the scooter anywhere in the city. No frantic hunting for an allocated parking bay or a charger. We did not have the time to go everywhere, but next time I visit Paris I am definitely taking one of these bad boys out for another spin!
Suddenly, Saturday over. We headed back to the house. My old house, and still, in the romantic depths of my heart, something like my home.
Homemade crêpes, movie, and then bed, because on Sunday we had an early start. To get to Disneyland from Paris you have to take the RER ligne A to Marne-la-Vallée. From the southwest suburbs, it’s an hour-and-a-half, but the station is just steps away from the front gates.
I’ve been to Disneyland once before, but I was only ten at the time, so I was excited to see what had changed, and what I would remember. With tickets for both parks, we knew it was going to be a full-on day if we were to have a chance of going on all the rides, so we arrived for opening time, and jumped immediately into our first queue – for the strange (and I think slightly out of place) Aerosmith ride in the Studio park.
It was wild, but I think the scariest ride for me was the Hollywood Hotel Tower of Terror, which really made me scream. We faced some long queues in the Studio park, though we managed to go on most of the main attractions – I also really liked the Crush Coaster.
Overall, I think I preferred the actual Disneyland Park, just because there were more rides to go on. I think the number of rides thinned the crowds into more reasonable waiting times, but fortunately all the rides in both parks have a queuing time estimate at the entrance, so at least you know if you’re going to be waiting for an hour.
High points of the Disneyland park were Hyperspace Mountain – very immersive and a definite must for any Star Wars fan – and Big Thunder Mountain (not so thrilling if you’re a grown-up, but impressive). We even saw a duck with her octuplet brood. The park was extremely clean – a good nesting spot for birds, the wannabe naturalist in me notes, since this means it is likely not home to many rats.
I was a bit disappointed that the Pirates of the Caribbean ride was closed – this is the only water ride and the heat was Moroccan – but we consoled ourselves with ice creams instead. A point worth mentioning is the food in general, which was decent, as far as theme park food goes. It was basic, but it was not as cheap or rubbish as I was expecting. I had fish and chips for dinner, and N the ribs. Overpriced, but not awful.
We nipped back into the Studio Park to go on the Ratatouille ride, which uses 3-D technology in an inventive way, and managed to squeeze in the Toy Story rides before it was time to head home, cramming onto the first train back to Paris after closing time, together with a squash of families and teenagers in Minnie Mouse ears.
Home and sleep. It was one of the best dates I’ve been on – lots of laughs, and to be honest if you can’t have a nice time at Disneyland where can you?
And then today. A lazy morning, into Paris for lunch, and then a stroll by Notre-Dame, clad in scaffolding, and ringed by an ugly military-style fence, complete with barbed wire. It was a depressing sight up close, but from the park the cathedral still impresses. There are various rumours circulating about what the reconstruction plans will be, from a competition to design a new spire to a rooftop pool, but what will actually happen remains to be seen.
Summer sun, holding hands, and watching the tourists mill about under the blue blue sky, it was just perfect, but sad. I will not see N in the flesh for more than a month again now, but this is one of our shorter separation periods, and the trip reminded me, if I needed reminding, that I am still very much in love. We will make it work, for the year that remains, and then he’ll be here, in the UK, and we can do all those normal, wonderful things like get married, put down a mortgage, and go out on the weekends.