Youpi! Il est temps pour Paris en Juillet!

I am so pleased that Paris in July is back for another year. Hosted by Tamara at Thyme for Tea and Karen at Bookbath, this is the fourth year that I have indulged in my enjoyment of all things France, and in particular, Paris as part of this event.

As an aside, I really hope that my post title actually say Yippee! It's time for Paris in July and not something totally inappropriate.

For my first post, I thought I would share a quote that I have specifically been saving for this day since I read the book earlier this year.

The set up for this scene is that Willem and Allyson are sharing one of the bicycles for rent that are so popular in some of the big cities of the world. Allyson has just completed a tour of some European cities (which didn't include Paris) and very impulsively has come to Paris for just a day with Willem, a young man she met in England.

We turn onto a choked street full of construction, half the avenue blocked by scaffolding and blockades, and I'm looking at all the graffiti; the SOS, just like on the T-shirt for that band Sous on Sur is scrawled there. I'm about to point it out to Willem, but then I turn in the other direction and there's the Seine. And there's Paris. Postcard Paris! Paris from French Kiss and from Midnight in Paris and from Charade and every other Paris film I've ever seen. I gape at the Seine, which is rippling in the breeze and glimmering in the early-evening sun. Down the expanse of it, I can see a series of arched bridges, draped like expensive bracelets over an elegant wrist. Willem points out Notre Dame Cathedral, just towering there, in the middle of an island in the middle of a river, like it's nothing. Like it's any other day, and it's not the freaking Notre Dame! We pass by another building, a wedding-cake confection that looks like it might house royalty. But, no, it's just City Hall.

It's funny how on the tour, we often saw sights like this as we whizzed by on a bus. Ms. Foley would stand at the front of the coach, microphone in hand, and tell us facts about this cathedral or that opera house. Sometimes, we'd stop and go in, but with one or two days per city, most of the time, we drove on by.

I'm driving by them now too. But somehow, it feels different. Like, being here, outside, on the back of this bike, with the wind in my hair and the sounds singing in my earls and the centuries-old cobblestones rattling beneath my butt, I'm not missing anything. On the contrary, I'm inhaling it, consuming it, becoming it.

Made me just want to visit Paris again when I read it.