I Didn't Love Parisby Amy
12 x 12 | materials patterned paper (Pink Paislee) + alphabet stickers (Heidi Swapp) + font (Elsie Swash Caps Black) + gold pen (Pilot Juice Gel)
A Note from Amy
After I wrote this journaling I thought "could I sound any more whiny? Complaining about being in Paris?" but I stayed with it because it was my authentic response. On a design note, I love adding gold (or silver, or grey) lines to fussy cut flowers. It adds a little extra pop and helps it to feel like it's more mine.
September Fun Fact
It's September! Is there anything more exciting than the arrival of autumn?
Journaling
I know: it’s sort of sacrilegious. Paris is the place everyone wants to travel to. The City of Lights! It’s romantic and historic and dramatic. Who doesn’t love Paris?
But I was totally overwhelmed. It felt too big and crowded.
It felt indifferent rather than welcoming, opaque and hard to read.
I felt like I was always hurrying and never getting anywhere.
And the Metro! The Metro gave me anxiety I never got over. Probably because when we arrived in Paris, thoroughly exhausted after our train from Amsterdam kept getting delayed, it was late and we had to figure out how to buy our tickets, and none of the credit card machines worked and there were no attendants to help, and no one spoke English. And once I figured out which train to take to our hotel, I wasn’t sure how to get on the platform going the right direction and I nearly started crying right there in the Nord train station.
Plus, I was hungry all the time. The famed Parisian bakeries and chocolate shops and creperies? I could. not. find them. And where were the mystical drinking fountains of Paris? I also could never find them and I was always thirsty.
(I think, looking back, that Paris should first be experienced with a tour guide.)
But there was this: after we left the Louvre (where I got to see Venus and the Three Graces by Botticelli, and yes, the Mona Lisa, but also the rest of Da Vinci’s Slaves statues, and the Venus de Milo, and so many paintings that moved me), and I told Haley and Mariah: we are eating somewhere nice.
So we wandered around until we found a street that was lined with restaurants, a few blocks away from the Siene, and we picked one. We sat down at a table on the street, and even though it was almost 10, the sun was still out. Our waitress was divine because she kept bringing us water, and the food! I ordered the roasted half chicken and ate the whole thing, along with mashed potatoes; Haley and Mariah both had pasta. My favorite was sharing a bowl of French onion soup with Haley in Paris. And then when we were finished eating, I ordered two desserts.
All the while the sun was busy setting and it shone right down the street, casting everything in a golden glow.
So while I didn’t love Paris (and the phone theft hadn’t even happened yet!), I loved this moment.