Paris in Four Days: A Journey Through the City of Light

There are cities you visit, and there are cities that absorb you. Paris is the latter. It is a place that exists in the collective imagination as much as it does in reality—romanticized, immortalized, stamped into postcards and film reels. Yet, no amount of expectation fully prepares you for its first embrace, the way it shifts from fable to something tactile, something lived. I arrived, weary from the long haul of travel, carrying the weight of distance, time zones crossed, and disrupted sleep. And yet, as the taxi moved through the city's arteries, the fatigue gave way to something else: a recognition, as if I had been here before, in a dream or another life.

The journey began in exhaustion, a ten-hour flight from Mexico City to Paris that felt like a slow erosion of time. Air France had done little to ease the discomfort, but there was no point in dwelling on it. What mattered was that I was here, stepping onto the glass-walled airbridge at Charles de Gaulle, where a biting cold cut through my clothes, reminding me that I had left behind warmth for something sharper, something real.

Like all airports, the airport was a place of passage rather than arrival—faceless and indifferent. I moved through it, clearing immigration and customs with the efficiency of someone who had done this before. Outside, the taxi queue promised its pitfalls; Paris, after all, is a city where naivety is taxed at a high rate. I ignored the solicitors in the arrivals hall and found a legitimate cab, handing over 65 euros for a ride into the city. The fatigue was beginning to settle in, but as the streets of Paris unfolded before me, I felt something else—a quiet astonishment.

After checking into the hotel and shaking off the dust of travel, I set out for my first real glimpse of Paris. The Eiffel Tower loomed ahead, a silhouette against the fading daylight. Though I had seen it countless times in books, on screens, and other people’s stories, it still carried the power of the unfamiliar. I stood there, absorbing it, letting the city’s weight settle on my shoulders.

That evening, I met Lalaine, a friend I had not seen since 2007. Time had played its games, shifting our lives in different directions, but at that moment, over dinner at Brasserie de Pres—an establishment now immortalized by Emily in Paris—we found common ground once more. The food was rich, the wine generous, and the city outside pulsed rhythmically.

The next morning, I set foot inside the Louvre. The museum was less a building than an idea, a collection of moments frozen in canvas and stone. I wandered its corridors, channeling my inner Robert Langdon, allowing the Mona Lisa to meet my gaze with that same knowing smirk.

The Louvre was a labyrinth of excess, a monument to both human brilliance and the sheer weight of history pressing down on its marble corridors. I wandered past the expectant throngs jostling for a glimpse of the Mona Lisa, their faces illuminated by the glow of phone screens, their reverence filtered through a digital lens. The museum, in its vastness, was at once overwhelming and intoxicating—a place where art was both worshiped and consumed, where centuries-old masterpieces were scrutinized in passing as if they were mere exhibits at a trade fair. I lingered in the quieter halls, where Flemish masters painted faces that seemed to whisper secrets and Egyptian sarcophagi rested in silence, undisturbed by time. Outside, Paris pressed against the glass pyramids, modernity encroaching upon antiquity, but within the Louvre, the past reigned supreme, imperious, and unyielding.

From the Louvre, I moved outward, to the Arc de Triomphe, where traffic spun in relentless, chaotic orbits. The Arc de Triomphe stood defiant at the heart of Paris, a hulking monument to conquest and memory, its sculpted friezes locked in an eternal struggle against time. I climbed its narrow, spiraling staircase—an ascent that felt like burrowing into the bones of history—emerging onto the rooftop where the city unfurled in all directions. Below, the Champs-Élysées pulsed with movement, a river of headlights and hurried footsteps, while the Eiffel Tower loomed in the distance, indifferent to the centuries. The wind carried the echoes of victories long past, but standing there, watching the ceaseless tide of modernity swirl around the monument, it was clear—Paris never pauses to look back for long.

Later, Galeries Lafayette swallowed me whole—a temple of commerce where the city’s heartbeat grew loudest. That evening, I returned to Trocadéro Gardens, where the Eiffel Tower performed its nightly trick, glittering in artificial splendor. The crowd gasped in unison, as though witnessing it for the first time, and I let myself believe, for a moment, that I was among them.

The following day led me to Notre Dame, where restoration work continued in silence, the cathedral standing as a wounded sentinel. Its facade, partially veiled, hinted at its former glory, and I wondered if it would ever be the same.

For lunch, I sought out Bouillon Chartier, an old Montmartre institution where history sat at every table. There, I tried escargot for the first time—tiny shells swimming in garlic and butter, their contents tender, yielding. It was the taste of Paris in miniature: old, indulgent, slightly defiant.

Later, I returned to the banks of the Seine, a crepe in one hand and coffee in the other, watching the river carry its secrets downstream. For all its grandeur, Paris was still a city of quiet moments, of spaces in between.

On my final day, I visited La Madeleine, a church more reminiscent of an ancient temple than a house of worship. Its columns stretched skyward, and its cavernous interior swallowed the sound. I stood there, feeling small in the best possible way.

Four days in Paris was not enough. It never is. But as I left, I understood what made this city linger in the minds of those who walked its streets. Paris is not about the things you do, nor even the things you see—it is about how it changes you and seeps into your bones without permission. Overrated? Maybe.

Paris is a city that does not ask for your love—it demands it. It is imperfect, impatient, and intoxicating. It whispers in alleyways, the rustle of café terraces, and the stolen glances between strangers. And just when you think you have left it behind, it finds you again in the scent of bread baking at dawn, in the click of a woman's heels on cobblestone, in the way the Seine moves under the weight of history. I departed, but Paris did not leave me. It never does. But when the plane lifted off, leaving the City of Light behind, I knew I would be back.

Some places, after all, refuse to let go.