Day 1

I had a mission: to see the Christian Dior Couturier du Rêve exhibit at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

A couple days after finals ended at Sciences Po I took off. Advance tickets for the exhibit were not available, so I expected the line when I arrived that morning. I just didn’t expect the four-hour wait.

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At first I thought the line would take about 90 minutes. But as the cold and rainy afternoon progressed, I realized that time was marching must faster than the line. I envied the people around me who took shifts with their friends to sit in a warm café across the street. Although my feet ached after a couple hours, eventually they were so frozen they no longer felt anything. At that point I considered leaving, fearing frostbite, but after waiting two hours already I felt it would more wasteful to leave without seeing anything. What can I say? I’m a slave to fashion.

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See, this was a temporary exhibit. Only July to January. And it was Dior. I’ve always had a weakness for fashion museums, and I was in Paris, and I couldn’t not go. My resolve was fiercer than my boredom and mild misery, so I waited.

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Finally, around 3 p.m., I made it into the warm, dry embrace of the museum. It was heaven. And the exhibit was magnificent. It dripped silk and satin and sequins. Dresses were everywhere I spun, stunningly crafted in gorgeous organza and perfectly gathered chiffon.

It was worth the wait. Room upon room of gorgeous gowns and couture history and red carpet dresses. My 12-year-old self, who adored Project Runway and spent hours designing clothes, could hardly have dreamt it.

After Dior and dinner, I went to the Louvre. A friend had told me to go on a Friday night after 7— it stays open to almost 10 on Fridays, it’s empty, and as French students we get in free so it doesn’t matter how long we stay.

I circled my top exhibits on a map and sailed right in, wandering through peaceful galleries that were surely choked with crowds earlier that day. I even walked right up to the Mona Lisa with only a few other people scattered around me. It was fabulous.

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Once the Louvre closed, I took the metro to my hostel in Montmartre. I shared a room with a middle-aged lady who didn’t really speak English, so I talked to her for a little while in my simple-yet-passable French. Even though she snored horribly later on, looking back, what stands out most was not the sleepless night but the memory of us perched on our beds in that tiny room, speaking slowly, talking about what brought us there.

Day Two

The next morning I got up before sunrise, because I had another mission that weekend: to see the Sacre Coeur without hundreds of people crawling over it like ants. I had tried to see it on my first trip to Paris, but the crowds were too much. That’s why this time, I had a plan.

I walked through the sloping streets of Montmartre at dawn, the light grey and the city quiet. Frost coated the railings on the district’s endless stairs, and I had to walk carefully to avoid slipping on ice. I loved how calm and cool it was that morning, so different from the sweaty chaos I had encountered in Montmartre a few months earlier.

When I got to Sacre Coeur the sun was just starting to rise. Montmartre is on a hill, so the city stretched out far below, steam unfurling from chimneys and little clouds made dark against the pink sky. It was beautiful; there were just a few people around, including some runners (can you imagine having that view on your morning run?!) and it felt like we were all in on a secret. Behind me, the Sacre Coeur was glowing in the morning light.

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After I checked out of my hostel I met my sister at the train station; she had just flown in from Ireland, where she was student-teaching. We had breakfast at a nearby brasserie and she discovered the bliss of a French croissant.

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We visited the Champs Élysées, Monet’s Water Lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie, and the cute streets of the Marais district before we had to catch the bus back to Reims. That weekend, I felt close to the city. I love that now when I look at maps of Paris, I can trace the places I have been.