The Paris Trials

March 15, 2023, I arrived in Paris for the first time. March 14, 2025, I arrived for the second time. With this unique opportunity to see the same city, on the same weekend, two years apart, in entirely different circumstances, I have been able to learn a lot about the city and also a lot about myself.

My first time in Paris was spectacular. Except that I was miserable most of the time.

I went to Paris for the first time with a large (40+) group of students, teachers, and family members from my high school. We had a packed itinerary—we hit three countries and five cities in less than two weeks. That itinerary was full of all the best things to do in London, Normandy, Paris, and Munich (and also a few boring things, but that’s life). We had a huge charter bus to get us from place to place and an English guide who spoke French and a little bit of German accompanying us the whole way.
The convenience of having a set itinerary, strong leaders to facilitate a large group, and arranged transportation was not something I knew to appreciate just yet. Rather, I was blinded by the negative: I was exhausted, my stomach hurt, I was involved in way too much interpersonal drama, they gave us only two hours in the Louvre, and nearly every night I ate overwhelmingly terrible food. Turns out restaurant staff don’t give twenty aggravating Americans the cream of the crop.

But let me be clear, I loved Paris the first time. I was dazzled by the Louvre, fell in love with Versailles Palace, and had the time of my life on a boat tour of the Seine. I knew that all my qualms could easily be solved by different circumstances.

So I went back.

The second time was completely different. It was just me and one other friend, we dedicated a weekend of travel just to Paris, we had no vehicle of any kind, we could spend as much time as we wanted at each place with only a flexible schedule in place, and we prioritized finding good food. The result?

My time in Paris was spectacular and I was miserable some of the time.

We found that public transportation in Paris is not as easy and luxurious as the Italian system we’ve grown accustomed to and that we would only have time to hit the places we had paid in advance for because transportation would take so long. We found that six hours in the Louvre leaves your feet aching for days and your stomach growling so much you stop at the first restaurant you smell from the street. We also found that the cheapest flight is that cheap because there are no buses that run to the airport before 5 am. But we also explored the Louvre on our own time frame, oohed and ahhed the Eiffel tower from afar and from within, and way overstayed our Versailles Palace tickets without a care in the world. We ate gloriously umami Chinese food and went back for seconds and thirds of beautifully crispy, flaky croissants. The one night we got to sleep (and yes, of the three nights we were traveling, only one was spent sleeping), our sleep was blissful, sweet, and as long as we wanted: no angry school chaperones came knocking at our door.

I love Paris. Sure, both times I have visited have involved a healthy dose of misery, but travel without a little bit of misery isn’t as fun to tell about later. It’s the misery of spending over an hour on buses and trains and the getting-off-at-the-wrong-stop to get to the Eiffel tower that makes each bite of croissant a little bit sweeter and each photo of the tower when we finally arrive that much prettier.