I arrive in Paris sleepily timid, forced to venture on my own as Erika's connection was missed and she won't be touching down on French soil until six hours after her scheduled 8:00am arrival.

But the bus is easy, as is the hotel. The sky is thick with haze, but the sights make me giddy, especially the surprising La Grande Roue (a giant ferris wheel) strategically placed at the Place de la Concorde, the midway point between Arc de Triomphe and the Musée de Louvre.

I walk side streets to sneak up on La Tour Eiffel when it least expects it. I buy a tiny bouquet of flowers across from the Hôtel des Invalides and snap black and white photographs of children running along sandy cous cous paths.

Crossing the Pont Neuf, I spot a young couple engaged in kisses and conversation on a bench in the otherwise empty Square du Vert-Galant, in the Northwest corner of the Ile de la Cité. I can't look away. It's perfectly Parisian.

I stumble onto a small flower market near Notre Dame on my way to meet Erika and wind my way through the poppies and evergreens. An hour early for our meeting, I make my way into a desolate corner of the cathedral and listen to the purest sounds of the choir bounce off each creased corner stone. Tossing my head back to look straight overhead, I attempt to resist vertigo. I'm chokingly overwhelmed by the beauty of it all.

Erika arrives at the entrance at 4:00pm and we talk, my ears trying to adjust to the English once again. After depositing her bags at the hotel and assimilating into sleep depravation, we head to glimpse La Tour Eiffel at night. And that's when I see it for the first time and let out classic Kristen-squeal-of-delight: La Tour is actually *sparkling*. We can only glimpse its top above the red-roofed apartments as we near the Trocadero, but even Erika is charmed by the sight.

Once we arrive at La Tour, its flashy exterior has disappeared and we bet on whether or not it will happen again. As we walk away on the winding paths along the Champ de Mars, we make excuses to turn our heads to check, just in case the magic sparkle returns on the hour. And soon I steal a glance and squeal again. Indeed the sparkle returns for ten minutes every hour on the hour after dusk conquers the city. It's like a dream.

We make our way to the Left Bank and dine lazily at Le Machon d'Henri, the exact kind of tiny and charming bistro that I love so dearly to stumble upon after living in a city for years. After dinner our waiter laughs at our request for grand crème instead of espresso, but we've both been awake for thirty-six hours and are fading fast. We escape just before pumpkin time and I soon fall into a sparkling dream in my first Parisian sleep.

 le deuxième jour >>