When you visit Paris for a short vacation, you see Paris.

You visit the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre-Dame, the Seine and the beautiful boulevards. You take selfies, you eat a croissant, you sit at a sidewalk café and probably wonder why you waited so long to come here.

 

Our previous visit, we stayed a month and then moved on to another country. But after nearly two months living in Paris, we are seeing things differently.

We start to see how Paris lives and how we live in it.

That's one of the unexpected gifts of slow travel. We are fortunate to be retired. We aren't here for a week, trying to squeeze everything possible into a number of days. We rented an apartment, unpacked our suitcases and settled into a neighborhood.

 

For a while, we stopped being tourists.

And that's when we started noticing things.

We recognize the streets around our apartment. We know where to buy groceries, where to get a good price on wine and where to stop for dinner when neither of us feels like cooking.

We've started recognizing familiar faces.

There's something wonderfully comforting about being recognized by the person behind the counter at the bakery or the checkout lady at the grocery store who smiles because she sees your face everyday. They probably don't know our names, but they know... we certainly aren't Parisians.

But slowly, the city begins to feel a little less anonymous.

You're not on vacation...you're living here.

 

We've learned to slow down.

As Americans we've noticed something about French. It is the importance of taking time.

A meal isn't simply something to get through before doing something else. Sitting at a café isn't necessarily about having a glass of wine and leaving. Sometimes it's about sitting. Watching. Talking.

Letting the world go by.

 

Another lesson is how we experience Paris...We walk. A lot.

We average five or six miles a day in Paris.

Walking has become our exercise routine, but it's also become one of our favorite ways to experience the city.

You see things from the sidewalk that you would never notice from a taxi.

A tiny courtyard restaurant hidden behind an ordinary doorway.

An old couple on a bench holding hands.

A beautiful building that isn't famous enough to have a plaque.

One couple arguing. And another couple laughing.
 

Paris reveals itself when you're walking slowly enough to notice it.

And sometimes our best discoveries have been the places we weren't looking for.

We have been here a dozen times with each other and without. So, we have seen “the sites.”

But there is always another museum.

Always another monument.

Always another neighborhood.

Always another amazing restaurant.

Always another attraction YouTube told us , "we simply must see."

But then again, we are here for two months, if we are feeling tired or not feeling up to it... we can just stay at the apartment. No need to squeeze in another site.

 

We can sit in a café for an hour and call that an afternoon.

We can wander without an itinerary.

We have the luxury of being retirees practicing slow travel.

We don't pretend to be Parisians. We're Americans living temporarily in Paris.

But there is a subtle difference between staying somewhere and beginning to feel connected to it.

It's buying groceries instead of eating every meal in a restaurant.

It's figuring out which Metro gets you home.

It's doing laundry.

It's knowing which direction to walk to get back to your apartment.

It's having a favorite restaurant around the corner.

It's opening your front door and knowing exactly where you are.

Those ordinary routines are what turn a place from a destination into a temporary home.

A place to live for a little while.

 

However, the biggest lesson may not actually be about France at all...It's about us.

As senior citizens, we are acutely aware that time is not something to be saved for later.

We've spent the first 70 years of our lives doing what people are supposed to do. We had successful careers, we raised families, we maintained a home. Basically we took care of our responsibilities because that is what is required to be an adult.

Now, we understand that life isn't waiting for you at some future destination.

It's happening now.

 

We now know what it feels like to buy freshly baked baguettes in the morning; what it is like to walk home past world famous landmarks and hardly notice; what it is like to sit down with a glass of wine at a neighborhood cafe; what it is like to quietly smile at each other and silently convey “this is our life.”

 

Paris has reminded us that those moments are not insignificant.

These moments are probably the most significant ones.

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See you on the journey.

Rock and Barb