Tag Archives: paris

Travel

London and Paris!!

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I’ve just returned from an awesome, fun, and exhausting trip to Europe. With multiple of my closest friends from Hong Kong, we visited the sites in London and traveled to Paris. Here’s a rundown of the cool stuff I did:

Day 1: London – I didn’t sleep for 36 hours this weekend because of the time change, so as soon as I landed in London (at 6am, mind you), Shelley and I were off and running! I told her to not let me sleep until bedtime, so we left the house for 12 hours – I must’ve been running on pure travel adrenaline! We went to Brick Lane to visit the markets, ate “famous” bagels (aka we saw a line and thought, “Why not join that line? It looks popular!” They were just okay, in case you were wondering…), and perused the flower market nearby. Shelley’s friend Ella met us in the afternoon, took us to a farm in the city, and then we walked along a canal to a delicious little hipster bar located in a coffee mill. Then we went to a rooftop bar, listened to a band, and met up with Shelley’s roommates – who are hilarious by the way…think fraternity house circa 2003. We were exhausted but starved, so we went to dinner and after hitting a very big wall, I was in bed by 11:00pm, 36 hours after waking up in Chicago.

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Dating, Travel

A True Gentleman

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My ex sent me a message while I was on vacation (yes, on vacation!!) telling me to never contact him again and if I ever see him on the street to completely avoid him. Needless to say I was a wreck after reading this email. It’s easy to say that I should have just brushed it off and told myself that I don’t want to see or talk to him anyway (which is the case…), but it still felt like a punch in the gut. I cried, I couldn’t sleep, I was listless. Paris was the next day and I couldn’t even be excited. Roll that all together and then I was pissed. I was about to go to Paris and I was crying over some dude who I don’t even want to be with anyway (insert a big fat “duh, you idiot” right here). 

Once we touched down in one of the most beautiful places in the world, ex boyfriends and rude emails slowly drifted away. On the second morning, my friends and I met an absolutely lovely French boy who took us to dinner and drinks that night, then spent his work break helping us to purchase items for a picnic and took us to a sweet little square in the middle of the city to enjoy our food and each others company. He was 19 and wanted to practice his English, so throughout the weekend we all spent hours eating, talking, and laughing. 

Daniel was an absolute gentleman. He spoke to all of the shop owners for us, found places where we wanted to go, opened doors, made sure we crossed the road with no trouble, etc. He wasn’t trying to date us or sleep with us; he was legitimately being a nice person. It made me think…why isn’t every guy this nice?? Why would I settle for someone who doesn’t treat me this way all of the time?? 

I don’t want to date a 19 year old in France, but I do want to date a guy who acts and treats me like this young man did. I don’t need to be swept off my feet by grand gestures, but I would like my heart to flutter a little faster with nice, thoughtful, and caring gestures. I look forward to finding that person who’ll want to make me happy and will do things out of the kindness of his heart.