I'll tell you a story: When I was seventeen I came to Paris with my family. It was the summer between high school and university, my first trip to Europe. We strolled the Champs Elysees discovered Zara and Sephora, ate paté with pickles, discovered Musee Rodin. One of my fondest memories is of having dinner at a restaurant that was on the Champs; being in the dining room with its beautiful décor, when we oohed and awwed and then the monsieur took us one floor higher to a room that was even more spectacular.

We had a classical French meal, rich and creamy, great wine, followed by macarons. It was delicious, cleverly flavored with rosewater, it collapsed in my mouth with sweet sensation. The night before we left, we went back to eat or at least taste the dessert but the restaurant had vanished. There was something so fantastic about searching for a restaurant with legendary tastes and rooms upon rooms of beauty.

Over the year, I've gotten into the habit of picking a neighborhood each Saturday to discover. One Saturday I chose St. Germain des Pres. Between observing the street fashion and thinking about life, I saw a line coming out of a bakery door. There are always fantastic sights to behold in boulangerie windows, but I saw that people were lining up to choose from rows and rows of multicolored macarons. I joined the line and picked seven. I had been casually searching for the rose flavor in different bakeries only to bite down on a strawberry or raspberry. I walked a little further and bit into the macaron and that was it- it was the macaron from when I was seventeen and first came to Paris.

The trip where I discovered the mystery and fantasy of travel, the point when I made a solemn promise that every day I would strive to enlarge my world, to make it bigger, to live and love more, to see all that was possible, to taste as many flavors of the world as was allowed.

But that's the thing with making your world bigger...sometimes you come back to the exact same spot, to your loved ones, to your hometown, to your friends, to your first language and you find that there is nothing sweeter.

A bientot Paris!

Ariana Austin is a freelancer writer currently based in Paris where she writes on arts and culture and foreign affairs. Her work has appeared in Trace magazine,the Foreign Service Journal and the Washington Post. She is happy to bring you a 20-something view of living, loving and learning in Paris. Contact her This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with any comments, questions or ideas.

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