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Do you like travelling alone as much as I do? This trip was special, the longest single trip I’ve ever had. The whole week of being completely on my own in an unknown City that became the love of my life – Paris! I was greedy and anxious to share my insights and first impressions of the City, so I deliberately didn’t tell anyone about my plans to visit it. It was just me and Paris, a perfect duo. It’s so common and pathetic to fall in love with Paris, some would say. Everyone falls – the City of romance, history and Mona Lisa. Although I do know people who find it dirty, shabby, and much too crammed with immigrants of any kind. I didn’t see the dirt – my eyes were guided to the sky, to the roofs of all those old and breathtakingly beautiful buildings, to the air of contentment filled with odors of croissants and café crème. History is imprinted so deep in the City, that you feel lost in time. Where is Place de Grève where all the people were burned? Why can’t I find it, I clearly remember the name from the novels I’ve read. Here it is, renamed and very statuesque, Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville. I went in search of Place de Vosges where Victor Hugo lived. He actually walked on these cobblestones! Living in Quartier Latin right across from Notre-Dame I heard its bells every morning waking up, just like so many generations before me. In the gardens of Versailles kings and queens I read a lot about strolled and gossiped. Molière showed his play to the king for the first time right here in Greek Hall in the Louvre. Every square centimeter on every street has someone’s memory in it. I leapt right to many first experiences. Seeing the Impressionists works for the first time in my life. First time of trying oysters on a huge take-away tray filled with ice cubes. Eating them in the tiny square facing the Notre-Dame and feeding an extremely lazy and fat city dove with leftovers of my lunch baguette. Eating the macaron cookies first time too, every day! And I cried. When I first saw Tour Eiffel, I wept like a ninny standing in the middle of Champ de Mars. I’m here, I’m seriously here in Paris, I can’t believe it! I climbed on foot up to the second floor of the Tour – it was the good challenge. When I saw Impressionists in the Musée d'Orsay – I shed tears. The copies I saw in books or net don’t reflect even a half of their original magic. I didn’t experience the known prejudice that French are distant and haughty. None at all! Only in Paris the museum security doesn’t flinch when my bag smells like hell of Reblochon cheese. Because I decided to make a sandwich, take a coffee, and have a breakfast in Tuileries garden in front of the fountain. Only here the metro worker leads people freely through the gates without validation for the only one RER train left. Because I decided to watch the twinkling Tour Eiffel precisely at midnight on the last night of my stay. I was standing right under it and gaping for full five minutes, and then running hard and fast to catch that last RER. It was a dive into the unknown but also so distantly familiar aura and voices. This atmosphere that I imagined when I was reading novels in my childhood, the melodic sounds of carefree French chatter. “You’re living tomorrow? Stay with me!” – said baguette seller. “How is it possible to live without oysters?” – exclaimed the oyster seller. “You will come back, you haven’t seen so much of me yet” – whispered the City.