The children are playign happily in the warmth of the German summer afternoon. A map covers the table in front of us, brochures and guidebooks piled to one side. My husband glances at me. “If it’s raining in the Alps, maybe we could go somewhere else…” I look up at him, and pull a guide book from the pile, while mentally drawing a circle on the map, centered on our current location, a radius of 4 hours or so. “What would you think about 3 days in Paris?”.

My heart stirs, my soul sings. I stare at him in wonder.

“Paris? Are you serious?” He sees the gleam in my eye and laughs. He pulls the map towards him, and traces the four-hour-trip on the autobahn with his finger. My excitement mounts.  I dream of art and architecture and history and beauty. The Louvre. The Eiffel Tower. Versailles. Notre Dame. Disneyland for the children.

And then we are there. Standing under the Eiffel Tower. I am in Paris. Paris. And it is everything I’ve dreamed.