From Paris, with Love

AM and I spent so much time in Notre Dame we didn’t realize that the group had branched off and we’d gotten lost. After calling Jodi (one of the guides) and texting and asking directions in French (surprisingly the information desk answered us in French not English) we discovered they were down the street at the prison where Marie Antoinette and other guillotine victims were held. It was a cool museum because it had re-enactments like Disney world with mannequins dressed in the traditional guard’s garb and the probable furniture in Marie Antoinette’s prison quarters. After we were walking back and we once again got lost (seems to be a reoccurring theme here?) and our guide Alex finally found us and walked back with us. Along the way we stumbled across the Love Lock Bride or Le Ponte Des Arts which is a bridge in Paris that crosses over the Seine River. It sounds like just your typical bridge until you look at it and realize that it’s covered in locks of all shapes and sizes, colors, decorated and simple. I didn’t know the whole story but I knew the locks were special so I asked Alex about them and he told us the story about how the locks are tokens of love they are padlocked to the bridge by loved ones and the keys are then thrown in the Seine River. He could see the “awww” expression in AM and my face and was quick to tell us that the locks are cut down by the police every year and new ones get put up. I think out of all the touristy things in Paris this was by far the one spot that really resonated with me. It wasn’t some bulking piece of architecture or a church or some spot where a famous person once walked. It was simply an expression of love. A spontaneous something that was probably the reckless act of an in love couple trying to leave their mark and it sparked into a huge flame that continues and continues. That night we went on a pub-crawl and I was half expecting it to be like Barcelona but I was so wrong. I learned from a Parisian who was friends with Alex that Paris isn’t really a bar/club city it’s more famous for its sites and culture. The pub-crawl leader was a study abroad student herself from University of Kentucky; she like us had spent a semester in Paris. I quickly realized the truth behind studying in a really big city. At one of the bars, a girl had left their wallet and a kind French guy found it and brought it to our leader and explained simply he found it and if it belonged to any of us. She looked at him quizzically and asked him, “Do you speak English” and it took AM and I to explain the situation to her. She had spent 3 months in France and wasn’t able to understand a simple sentence of survival French.