On Tuesday morning in a tiny, cramped bathroom I quickly threw on mascara, tried to fix my hair and checked my phone. 11:12 a.m. I already knew I wouldn’t make it to class on time.

‘Can you tell our professor I’ll be late,’ I texted a classmate. Normally this is when I’d try to think of an excuse to justify my tardiness, but this time the next text needed no stretch of the imagination. ‘I’m still in Paris.’

I’ve wanted to go to Paris ever since the first time I saw a picture of the Eiffel Tower at night. Everything about the city – the lights, the landmarks, the language – drips with romance and beauty. To spend five days there, and to be there on my 20th birthday, was like living a fantasy.

In five days we saw and did everything: window shopping down the Champs-Elysees, somberly viewing the tomb of the fallen soldier at L’Arc de Triomphe, eating dinner at a café overlooking the Eiffel Tower, perusing the Moulin Rouge, climbing the steps of Sacre de L’Acour to see the best view of Paris and everything in between.

When I called home while waiting to go on a river cruise on the Seine, my mom told me how proud she was that I was being so independent on this trip. Though I hadn’t thought about it before, she was right. I can barely find my way to the nearest Target at SU. How is it that I, and three friends from similarly small towns, managed to jet set off to a non-English speaking country with no one to fend for us but ourselves? You just have to make up your mind to do it, and hope you make it back in one piece. I think your 20s are the perfect time for traveling, because you’re mature and educated enough to want to see and appreciate all the historical landmarks, but young enough to run on full throttle, touring all day and raging into the early hours of morning, soaking up the nightlife.

Savoring our Parisian dinners for one last time, my roommates and I discussed our favorite parts of Paris. The Opera House, Versailles, sunbathing under the Eiffel Tower, mass at Notre Dame and sipping wine on the glass pyramids of the Louvre all made the list. So did the food. I certainly don’t need a cheap T-shirt to remind me that J’adore Paris.

I’m writing this as I stare out at the French countryside, which, oddly enough, looks a lot like my hometown. I’m alone, having just missed booking a seat on the train my roommates took an hour earlier. I’ll be back in London one minute before my lecture begins. In a little while I’ll need to finish the reading for class, but for now I’m just going to enjoy thinking about this excursion and all I was able to see during my week in Paris. If London itself isn’t a big enough incentive to study abroad, then the ability to travel through Europe for a semester definitely makes it worth missing a few SU football games.

Courtney Egelston is a junior magazine journalism and political science major. Her column appears weekly and she can be reached at cegelston@gmail.com

Published on October 7, 2009 at 12:00 pm