What Keeps Bringing Me Back to Paris

There is a moment that happens to me in Paris on every trip. I am somewhere in the city, a bridge at night or a table outside a café I have never been to before or standing in front of a painting I have stood in front of a dozen times, and something shifts. I take a breath. A smile crosses my face before I have decided to smile. And I realize I am simply, completely happy to be here.

That is what I keep going back for.

I was born in Paris. I grew up in Neuilly-Plaisance, just outside the city, and for my formative years Paris was not a destination. It was the place you took the train to on a Saturday morning. The city was ordinary to me in the way that only a place you love before you understand love can be ordinary. I go back every year now. My father still lives there. And every single trip, the city gives me something new alongside everything I have always known.

That is the magic. That is what I want to tell you about.

Every season is a different city

I typically go in the spring or the summer, though I have been in the fall and the winter as well. Summer evenings in Paris are unlike anywhere else I have ever been. The light stays until nine o’clock or later and the whole city moves outside. You sit on a terrace or stretch out in a park with a glass of wine and the sky goes pink and nobody is in a hurry, and you start to understand something about the French that you could not explain to someone who has not experienced it. There is no urgency when the evening looks like that.

The other seasons show you a different city. Fall and winter bring a certain austerity that I find beautiful in its own way. The sky goes gray, the air has some bite to it, the cafés feel more intimate. Paris with a nip in the air feels deeply and honestly itself. I love it in those seasons too.

On the things that people call touristy

I have been to Paris more times than I can count. I still go see the Eiffel Tower sparkle at night. I still take a boat out on the Seine and look up at Notre Dame and the bridges and the grand facades of the buildings going past. I still go to the museums. I still go up to the rooftops of the department stores in the Opéra neighborhood, which you have probably already seen all over Instagram. They are that popular for a reason. The view is genuinely extraordinary. I walk Place Vendôme. I stop into the Ritz and sit at Hemingway Bar and have a cocktail and feel very pleased with myself.

I say this because I think people sometimes feel like being a well-traveled person means graduating past the famous things. That has never been my experience. The famous things are famous because they deserve to be, and I enjoy them every time. Everybody travels differently, and there is no wrong way to do it. For me personally, I am not above any of it, and I do not want to be.

On wandering without a plan

What changes when you have been somewhere many times is not what you do. It is how you move. You stop trying to see everything. You start letting the city show you what it wants to show you.

Some of my best hours in Paris have happened when I had no particular objective. I turned down a street because something caught my eye. I sat at a café because I was ready to sit. This past spring I spent a lot of time between La République and Canal Saint-Martin, in the 10th, which is a neighborhood I had been to before but never really settled into. There is a particular life there, people going about their days in a part of the city that is not trying to perform for anyone, and I loved it.

One of the things I find most remarkable about Paris is the history that is literally in the walls. This is true of cities all over the world. History has been happening everywhere, on every continent, long before any of us arrived, and there is something genuinely wonderful about going somewhere and discovering that the place you read about in a book is real, that the building is still standing, that the plaque is right there on the corner of an ordinary block. I notice this when I travel in Africa, in Asia, in South America. In Paris I notice it on every single street.

Getting outside the city

One thing I always try to do on a Paris trip is take a small jaunt somewhere not too far outside the city that I have never been to before. This past year I went to Giverny. Monet’s gardens, the water lilies, the house, the whole thing. It was absolutely gorgeous. It took about an hour and a half from Paris and it was completely worth it. There is so much extraordinary country within easy reach of the city, and making time for at least one day trip has become one of my favorite parts of the trip.

The five things I always do before I leave

Every trip, before I go home, I make sure I have done five things. They are not a checklist. They are more like the way you close a book you love.

I walk along the Seine at night and watch the light from the buildings reflect on the water.

I go to Sacré-Coeur and then spend time in the Montmartre neighborhood. The church, the hill, the view of the city below, and then the streets going up and down, the galleries, the fabric stores, the restaurants tucked into narrow passages going up and down the hills. There is always something lively happening somewhere in Montmartre that you did not plan for. Last time I was there I came around a corner and stumbled onto a block party for a couple celebrating their 40th anniversary. They were celebrating in the street and inviting anyone passing by to join. I joined. I had a glass of something, talked to people, watched them dance. It was completely spontaneous and it is exactly the kind of thing that cannot be planned and cannot be replicated and is somehow always happening somewhere in that neighborhood if you are paying attention.

I find a park, buy something good to eat, and take a nap. The Tuileries, the Luxembourg Gardens, a small neighborhood park near Canal Saint-Martin, a bench on a street I cannot name. Paris is exceptionally good at parks.

I go to Harry’s New York Bar, usually in the afternoon. It is one of the great cocktail bars in the world, more classic drinks were invented in that room than almost anywhere else, and they make a very good hot dog, which I find genuinely delightful. I always find other Americans there, and I like talking to them. I like asking how their trip is going, what surprised them, what they are doing next. Harry’s is warm and human, and an afternoon there is one of my favorite ways to spend a few hours in Paris.

I go to bakeries. At least two new ones every trip, alongside Maison Noël in Neuilly-Plaisance, the bakery of my childhood and the last thing Paris gives me before I leave.

What I am really saying

I can name a hundred places in Paris worth your time. I could give you a full list of restaurants and neighborhoods and bars and the best time of day to see certain things and which arrondissements feel different at night than they do in the afternoon. I am happy to do all of that.

But what I actually want to tell you is this: the itinerary is not the enemy of discovery. The itinerary is what gets you there. What matters is building in some space within it. An afternoon without a specific stop. A street you turn down because something looks interesting. A café you sit at because you are ready to sit. A park you find without looking for it. A couple celebrating their anniversary and inviting strangers to dance.

At some point in every trip to Paris, I stop. I take a breath. A smile appears. And I am just genuinely happy to be there.

Paris does that for me, every single time, across every season, on every trip, even after all these years. I also believe that any city can do that for someone when the trip is put together right. That is the whole point of doing this work. Finding the version of that feeling for every person who travels.

That, more than any list of places, is why I keep going back to Paris. And it is why I love helping other people find their version of it, wherever in the world that turns out to be.

Priscilla Nzessi is the founder of Moments of Sonder Travel. She was born in Paris and grew up in Neuilly-Plaisance.