Somehow, I have never been to Paris.
I’ve traveled extensively as an adult (no study abroad for me — I had to work to help with college costs), twice to China, once to Denmark, three glorious weeks in Italy, a teenage vacation to Québec that I remember chiefly for the feel-it-in-the-air tension of the 1970s-era separatist movement, car voyages across states, camping trips, museum visits, fancy restaurants and food trucks, but never to the first modern city, the city of lights, romance, haute cuisine, haute fashion, haute everything: Paris.
Now, at 60, it is finally my turn. How lucky am I that I will share this five-week adventure with my 16-year-old daughter, 10 intrepid students and one super talented artist colleague and friend? And that we get to immerse ourselves in art and in travel writing as we all document the experience?
It’s my habit to prepare for adventure and to do so I’ve been reading Joan DeJean’s How Paris Became Paris, The Invention of the Modern City.
“What makes a city great” she asks in the introduction, before unveiling the creation, in the seventeenth century, of the first tourist guidebooks, “designed for visitors who planned to explore a city on foot.” We learn how 16th century King Henry IV launched Paris on its modern course and how that development galloped forward in the seventeenth century under Louis XIV, who continued the radical revisioning of what a city could be.
It’s quite a read, and I’ve just finished the introduction! My suggestion is that you read along with me. It’s a long plane ride. Why not land at Charles de Gaulle airport already filled with some feeling and confident with some understanding of how the amazing place you are about to discover came to be?