by Peggy Tee

Created on: May 27, 2010

The City of Light and Love has many charms, from the warren of cobblestone streets that make up the artsy Left Bank, to the elegant avenues and grand facades of the apartments just behind the Champs Elysses. Paris is an ancient city, with a pedigree that stretches back centuries. Founded by humble fishermen and populated by musketeers, courtesans, revolutionaries, princesses, artists and refugees - all hopelessly in love with Parisian charms and graces. 

My first visit to Paris is a vivid remembrance. I remember the river of lights along the Champs, seen from the windy outpost above the Arc du Triomphe. As the traffic swirled and merged, split and flowed, it seemed as if all of Paris was spread before us, the culmination of hopes and dreams. I love the energy of this city, the ready promises she seems to throw into the path of anyone daring enough to give Paris a chance, just one chance, to fall in love. 

it is a reckless, heady, charming city, a place where risks and romance run together in the blood. The passions of Paris include the morning ritual: a stroll down one of the side streets of the Marais, hunting out a boulangerie. Croissants, pain aux raisins and pain aux chocolat are fresh baked and laid out in glass cases, like perfumed jewels ready for the tasting. I pick a pastry, order a cafe, have my breakfast standing up at the bar. The locals come and go like feeding herds, each one so familiar that no verbal order is necessary - a terse nod, and their cappucino or espresso is served. 

I love that sense of possibility in Paris. It is here, perhaps more than any other city in the world, that you truly get a sense that anything, yes, anything is possible. Indoctrinated on music, films and books written and played out about the magic of Paris, is it surprising that I am a little intoxicated by the city? What is more surprising, perhaps, is any one who is not a little in love with Paris, even before you set foot in her streets, before you clap eyes on the Eiffel Tower - we are all perhaps, a little in love with the magic of Paris. 

On sunny days I go to the Luxembourg gardens and sit on the lawn amidst the students from the nearby university. Some bring picnics, others playing cards. Wisps of cigarette smoke curl nonchalantly in the air - this innate style that is soaked into the bones of Paris, of Parisians, this je ne sais quois that differentiates the City of Love from everywhere else in the world - it is this effortless, inherent

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