France

Paris hit differently than I expected. I'd seen thousands of photos of the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame, thought I'd be numb to it all — but standing there on Île de la Cité with the cathedral rising above me, all that carved stone against a cold blue sky, I just stopped and stared for longer than I'd like to admit. There's a weight to Paris you can't prepare for. The Seine was grey and flat, the bare trees were still, and none of that mattered because the city looked exactly like it was supposed to.

I spent most of my time just walking. The street near Thoumieux where the Eiffel Tower appears at the end of the road like something out of a film — that's a real thing, not a curated shot. The city keeps doing that to you. You turn a corner and there's a monument, or you cross a bridge and the ironwork is covered in thousands of padlocks slowly going rusty above the Seine. At the Louvre I stood in the gallery in front of the Mona Lisa longer than most — not because it's big or dramatic, but because you can't quite believe you're looking at the actual thing.

The food was part of it too. I went into a patisserie near the Marais and just stood in front of the macaron display for a solid minute choosing. Ate them walking back along the river, didn't sit down, didn't Instagram the view — just ate and walked and let the city be. That felt like the right way to do Paris.