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Though I was born in Paris, I left it for the French Riviera at the age of three.
Ten years later, I decided to travel to Paris in order to visit and spend some time with my grandparents for a week.
My grandfather is the one who taught me to love Paris.
He was born and grew up in the streets of the capital. Most of his memories are linked to this city. He spent days playing and walking in its streets as a child, went to the Sorbonne university as a student and spent most of his life working in Paris. You can imagine what the city means to him.
During my first days, he brought me to museums, famous places and monuments, gardens and cafés but he also made me visit lesser-known places. Places that only a man who grew up in this city can notice and know.
Each street was overflowing with History and anecdotes. And it was amazing being told them all by my grandfather as we were wandering from one neighborhood to the other.
While people came and went without noticing what surrounded them, I remember how amazed he seemed by all these little details, these marks of past events which confer the city its incredible beauty.
August is known for being the “best month to discover Paris” and it really was delicious to be able to walk in nearly deserted streets, places where so many pages of History were written.
One day, as I was walking alongside the Seine, I remember having finally thought “what a magical place”.
For years, I used to be a stranger to this city where I was born.
The first days, I literally felt like a tourist in my own town. Thankfully, my grandparents were there and taught me how to appreciate Paris neither as a stranger, nor as a tourist anymore, but as a Parisian.
Before I decided to visit my grandparents, I had never been really interested in Paris. I thought I knew it, when it obviously wasn't the case at all.
And after having lived this mind blowing journey, I realized that I had to discover it all again.
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