"I am "so" not worthy!" a Paris Travel Page by skywalkerbeth

I still remember those words, on my first trip to Paris as a 16 year old. A giggling bunch of high school teenagers on a school trip. We disembarked from the plane and one of the first comments I heard was "wow, it doesn't "feel" any different"

Out of the mouths of babes.

I think when you are 16 and traveling abroad for the first time, after having studied all the history and mythologizing it in your mind... you expect to step off the plane and into another world - a past world full of everything you have read and dreamed about. You expect to meet Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette and the the writers and poets of the previous centuries... and you expect to be turned into another person entirely - like a princess with flowing white robes coming to meet her knight in shining armor.

The thing a 16 year old fresh off a plane (and seeing the earth isn't a-tilt) doesn't realize when they see the same facade seen at home... is that you do. You do get to meet all the noted people in your mind. They are all around you - they did shape what you see. Only their physical presence is gone.

And you do become a different person. You just don't realize it at the time. If I could wave a magic wand and have a wish fulfilled, it would be that each and every child could visit Paris before they turn 18.

more to follow... bear with me!

and my title? How can I possibly describe with my limited and limiting words, "Paris". I simply cannot do it justice. It would take a lifetime.

I do however hope you look at Beatchick's Paris pages. And Shrimp56. and many others I am sure I am omitting.