“Paris is not the most romantic city in the world,” I said to the man in the Washington D.C. Border queue. We had been stuck for an hour and spoken about siblings and coffee preference, and now had moved on to travel.
“Yes, I agree,” he said, “Do you know what city can be romantic though…Washington D.C.”
Smooth.
Back to Paris –
I have been twice in my life, and despite the reputation it holds, on both occasions I have been far from being seduced by a man holding a baguette.
The first time was when I was seventeen and on a sixth-form trip. We were asked to partner up for the Eurostar, I left it to the last minute to find my train buddy, and ended up with sitting next to the teacher, Mrs Muller*.
She was a pleasant enough lady with dark grey hair and a husky voice from a bad cigarette habit. She also loved yoghurt. Every day, a small pot of fruit chunk Ski yoghurt would be on her desk. Next to it would be the teaspoon with a dried yoghurt skid on it. Sometimes, she would wait for the break to consume her snack and other times, she would lick the spoon viciously while we answered questions about cash cows and stock markets.
So that was who my train buddy was for entering the city of romance. Not a good start.
Mrs Muller had booked one of those cheap school hotels. At the same time, a German boy school was checking in. We were an all-girl school, so the only thing we knew about meeting men in foreign lands was what we had watched in those Olsen Twin movies. By the time we checked in, we had mentally picked out the boy who was going to sneak us away on a moped and show us the Eiffel Tower.
Later that evening we realised that the German boys were not on the same page as us. They must have thought we were ridiculous in our thick-knitted Ralph Lauren jumpers and plastic pearl necklaces because it became apparent that they didn’t want to romance us – they wanted to terrorise us.
A gang of them came to our floor. I cowered on my bed as a bunch of them banged on my door. I dialled my friend’s room and cried, “This never happened to Mary-Kate and Ashley!”
….that was trip number one.
Cut to two years later, I went to Paris with some school friends. We were meeting a girl, Jane* who was in our year group. We had planned to go to Paris, but when we were picked up from the airport by Jane, we were told we were going to go to her boyfriend’s house first. And so off we drove with the city in the rear-view mirror.
Her French boyfriend and his friends were at the house. Now, this could have been something, but in the first minute, we realised that there was a significant language barrier between us.
Jane was the best at languages in school, which is how she ended up living in Paris. I, on the other hand, stumbled through my GCSE and came out with a C.
Despite six years of French lessons, I can just about say sentences like, ‘le chat c’est très vert.’
Throughout the morning, we kept hearing the boyfriend and his friends say, la piscine. I knew this word well, because I had to describe my holiday for my French oral exam. I went to le piscine and it was très parfait.
In the afternoon, we discovered why Le Piscine was being mentioned. We were driven to another unknown house where there was a swimming pool and a gigantic Alsatian on a long chain. The French men gestured for us to get into the pool with them, but I and my equally uptight friend didn’t want to get into la piscine. So, we stuck together on a broken lounger with a hose pipe to spray the monster dog whenever it came close.
We did get to Paris the next day. Jane kindly toured us around the best parts of the city; The Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower.
Paris is pretty, and at night, it can make for a lovely backdrop to a date. If a man was to ask something of you, you’ll be more swayed to say yes if it was in front of the Palace of Versailles, than if it was in front of a fish and chip shop in Hull.
However, for me, Paris hasn’t been romantic. And in case you’re wondering
– nor was Washington D.C.
THE QUACK 