During my first ‘From the heart’ post two months ago, I told you about my lifelong passion for ballet. I’ve been in love with ballet ever since I was a child and another passion that goes back to my childhood is… Paris!

As a child I was attracted to Paris. I don’t know how or why this began, but the capital of France had some kind of affect on me which is hard to describe. I used to have a scrap book in which I put pictures and articles I could find of the city of lights.

I had never been to Paris, but it captured my imagination big time. Was it the elegance of the Eiffel Tower? The beautiful cast iron balconies on the yellow buildings? The Arc de Triomphe with the Champs Elysées stretching before it? The Tuileries? I can’t possibly tell, but I know it was this strange addiction for a 7 or 8 year old at that time…

It took me years to finally visit Paris and I must say… that first visit definitely didn’t disappoint!! It was in 2002 (I was nearly 31!!! why the hell did I wait so long…) and I travelled with my friend from Australia who was on a holiday here in Europe. Sadly I could only join her for a day, but we made the most out of it! We took a hop on hop off bus to see as much as possible on that day (I was also 7 months pregnant so that bus gave me the opportunity to rest a bit).

Below you can see two pictures of my friend from Australia and yours truly… not being touristy AT ALL 😀

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That first visit made me longing for more… and many other trips to Paris followed. I think I have visited about 18 times in total now and I am still not tired of the city. I am lucky enough to live only about 300 km away. Most of the times I just do a daytrip to Paris. I have done a couple of weekends though and of course that is ab fab as you’re able to go out at night.

The biggest highlight of all my trips to Paris is definitely going up the Eiffel Tower. I had already seen the Eiffel Tower many times before actually going up and I was absolutely mesmerized with the views (I had of course timed our visit very well so we could see the sun go down over Paris). Absolutely a must!!

Other highlights were:

• a visit to Montmartre: even though this is very touristy, we enjoyed it very much as  we just sat there hours on end on an outdoor terrace on Place du Tertre, enjoying our Sunday lunch and a glass of wine, soaking up the autumn sun whilst watching the world go by…

• gawking at the Christmas decorations of the Galeries Lafayette (and do go up the roof to admire the view!!)

• Musée d’Orsay… it actually brought tears to my eyes seeing some works of art

• enjoying the buzz at Les Tuileries during Fashion Week

• walking in the narrow streets of le Marais on a sunny Saturday morning at 9.30 before the crowds arrived (here with one of my darling sisters)

• visiting Versailles (will have to go again I guess, since we didn’t actually see the gardens and Le Grand Trianon)

Still on my list:

• attend a ballet at L’Opéra de Paris
• attend a tennis match at Roland Garros
• visit a couple of museums: Musée de L’Orangerie, Musée Rodin, Musée Cognacq-Jay, Musée Jacquemart-André (Louvre perhaps, but it’s soooo big!)
• having afternoon tea at the Ritz
• do a boat trip on Canal Saint-Martin
• and so much more!!!

I hope can still visit this beautiful city a lot in future and tick off all the things mentioned above!

Well… that’s it for this second ‘From the heart’ post… See you soon for more heartfelt topics 🙂

Love, Kathleen