ahh, Paris! Je t'aime! Probably one of my favorite cities in the world. If someone said they'll give me a ticket to go anywhere in the world - Paris will usually be my choice. I first visited the City of Lights as a naive teenager. My parents "loved" me so much, they got me out of the house and shipped me off for three weeks with 25 other puberty stricken adolescents to roam around Western Europe. We were entrusted in the care of an ex-nun, a Catholic brother and what I think was a 26 year old man-child. On this three week journey, we scoured the lands of 7 different countries, multiple cities, 100s of churches, all while traversing in a double-decker luxury bus which had a huge crack across the top deck window. When we inquired with our driver, Eddie, how it got there, he said in his broken English, "tree branch too low!" (to this day, we still think he spoke perfect English but chose to ignore our childish dialogue and harassment throughout the entire trip.)
Anyhow, this adventure was complete mayhem but it made for hilarious stories, great memories and impromptu songs about the "unique aroma" we constantly endured wherever we went. I truly believe this trip instilled in me a permanent travel bug and I have yet to find a cure to satisfy its cravings. I've since returned to Paris three other times and visited 20+ other countries but still have so many more on my list. I find that most of my waking hours are spent thinking about either 1) where can I go next and 2) how am I going to pay for it? Both questions still leave me dumbfounded.
So thank you mom and dad for giving me the gift of travel at such a young age. You have given me a lifetime of endless destinations to seek out and discover.
That was a fun trip...I still have pic of said man-child chaperone following his lost bet
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