The things people never tell you about Paris . . .

I couldn't keep my eyes open on the train ride from London to Paris but it didn't matter much as darkness had fallen and shadowed everything from view. Thump thump, thump thump, the train began to slow, jolting me from my upright sleeping position.  "We're in Paris," I thought, a quiet smile spreading across my face.  Light fluttered past my window as we pulled nearer the station, begging my first glimpse at the City of Love.  I strained my eyes to see thru the midnight hour and there it was . . . graffiti.

A constant stream of photographs, movies, songs and first hand reports had painted a romantic picture of perfection on the blank canvas of my young, Idaho girl mind.  It had never occurred to me that Paris, or the people living in it, might actually be fallible.

There are beggars at every turn.  There are street performers (talented beggars themselves) vying for a place at every street corner and at every tourist attraction.  Tourist attractions draw in every walk of life, every language, every race from every corner of the earth but they don't draw in the Parisians that one might picture being surrounded by while in Paris.  And since there are approximately  5 restrooms in Paris proper to accommodate about 1,000,000 tourists every back road and ally smells of urine.  There are street vendors selling the same overpriced trinkets up and down old cobble stone roads.  Historic edifices as old as the wind blowing about them are weighed down in thick, black dirt.

And despite all this, or maybe because of it, Paris begins to get under your skin and it make it's way into your heart until it's pumped out into your blood stream and integrated into every cell of your body.  Your time there becomes a beautiful dream that you long to realize again and again.  

I can't wait to tell you all about it,