I recently asked a friend “Do you ever just want to up and move to Paris?”

She looked at me like I was crazy, but I have a hard time reconciling myself with the idea that not everyone dreams of the Parisian lifestyle, because that’s my life goal. Partly realistic, partly wildly romanticized, I dream of croissants in tiny cafes and and rainy days spent cuddled in a window seat on the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

This morning, I stumbled onto Julia Engel’s blog, and her beautiful pictures of Paris made me ridiculously homesick (for my future home, that is). I was so inspired to put together a monochromatic outfit, buy some fresh flowers for myself, and blog in a cafe (instead I cleaned my room and surfed Julia’s blog some more before class).

I like that my first “Travel Tuesdays” post will be about Paris, since it is a life-long love as well as the destination of my first solo trip. My tangible history with the city started with my senior project in high school, where I researched “what is the mystique of Paris?” and then went to live in the City of Lights to see how my experiences compared.

I would love to share on this blog some of the valuable lessons I learned while traveling alone in a foreign city (like the definition of “emergency money”). But I think I will leave this particular post as a little love note to my favorite city.

au revoir !