rose-colored
(solo traveling in Paris)
The women in my family are difficult.
My mother was terrible and my aunt fared no better. While both left some psychological scars, there was one phrase my aunt liked to tell me over and over again. “La vida no es color de rosa” (Life isn’t pink).
This was her reply to my ever dreamy, fantastical disposition. Life isn’t pink, life isn’t easy. Life is harsh, life is cruel. This was her world view. She tried her best to instill this in me.
Instead I bought pink-colored glasses and went to Paris.
Solo traveling isn’t easy, especially as a young woman. There are too many dangers to consider, too many possibilities to acknowledge. But I never thought about them too seriously. I think if we stop to think about all the ways we can be hurt by the world, we will never get anywhere. I learned this from my family.
All the women in my family aren’t great adventurers, they are often too locked in their own personal cages. My grandma stopped driving after she got in one single car accident. My aunt has an eternal negative look on life. And my mother has been an addict most of her life. A great thread of fear runs in them, this fear is passed down. I know because I feel it too.
A deep desire to build walls and shut the world out. A desire to stay safe and live and die in my room. Yet I cannot imagine myself living out this end. So to break the cycle and break the spell, at twenty-six I was planning the unthinkable. It was the dream of Paris that moved me so.
This dream, however, begins in the past. One foot in the memory of watching Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette at fourteen and another in an exchange with an older woman at a bookstore.
I was working there, unsure what do with my life as often those in their middle twenties are, and I was ringing her up. She was buying books on Paris and I told her I had never been and had always wanted to go.
“You are young,” she said. “Go to Paris.”
And though I was very lost, something very wise in me told me I should listen. I began to prepare a trip to Paris. My first solo trip. Abroad, no less.
I learned french and looked up flights. I didn’t tell anyone in my family about my trip. I would tell them after I went. I would go in the winter, it would be cheaper. And Paris would still be Paris even in the winter. I prepared for the weather. Symbolically I started to understand.
I thought to buy a pink coat.
I’m always a little ill-prepared when I travel.
I didn’t sleep much on my flight and I arrived in the middle of a dark afternoon. There were no great monuments to signal my Parisian arrival. While I played “Bonjour Paris” from the musical Funny Face in my earbuds, my reality was quite extraordinarily ordinary.
A two hour jam on the road had me on a bus bored to death. And at the train station, I was bumbling around, trying to keep pace with everyone else. I annoyed a french woman so much with my luggage, she kept repeating “pardon” over and over because I would not move.
I was staying in Vanves, a suburb on the outskirts of Paris, and getting there was a bit more of hassle than I had imagined. Beyond the culture shock and slight language barrier (I was able to understand french rather well), it was already dark. It’s always harder to discern streets in the nighttime, but now imagine in a place you’ve never been.
I remember vividly walking down a pitch-black road because my google maps had told me to do so. Me in my pink coat and my polka dot luggage, this would be a good place to die as any. For a brief moment I was certain I was an idiot and I would die in Europe. But this passed.
Somehow my sense of direction did not fail me and I arrived at my airbnb to a very kind host. After showing me the place, I, starving, asked what was to eat around here. She told me because it was late most eateries were closed, but she and her boyfriend were nice enough to walk me over to the nearby convenience store.
After laughing at my pronunciation of Louvre, they left me to my devices. I got lost again walking back to the apartment. But I did have the loveliest chocolate beignets for dinner. And though I slept very little I woke up to a bird song out my window.
That morning, I walked to the nearest boulangerie for my breakfast. A chocolate croissant and a herbal tea, this would become a ritual. I took the metro back to the city, passing a beautiful farmers market, the world already buzzing.
My plans were already outlined by past me, today would Palais Garnier (the Opera House) and the Louvre (the most famous art museum). I could not see myself spending my first day in Paris anywhere else.
I still remember everything about that day. How cold the day was, how elegantly beige the streets were, how the sun was barely peeking behind clouds. I remember my black boots hitting the pavement and the music was I listening to. “Journey to the Past”, Anastasia, the broadway musical; my penchant for romanticizing everything.
There was magic everywhere I looked because I was in Paris.
I walked to the Louvre, correct pronunciation and all. A museum so huge, an entire day wouldn’t suffice to see it all. I reminisced on all of the world’s most precious art. The Mona Lisa is very tiny and the Venus de Milo is the most beautiful woman in the world. I was overwhelmed, but just the right amount. A mixture of tiredness and excitement, the beginning of a great adventure.
I must confess that the greatest sight of the day remained outside. A lady, a tower, a beacon of light. My first peek at the Eiffel Tower. The dream had unfurled right in front of me.
The morning after the next, having slept better at last, I took off in a different direction. This time in search of a palace.
The city of Versailles is just a normal city. Too normal, as I see children running towards school and parents walking alongside them. Then I turn around the corner. Versailles should be here, I think. It seems wrong. I expect a country side or a plethora of trees to remind me of a park. Instead across the street is a palace. There are cars, an intersection, streetlights, pavement, and a golden gate that has stood there since 1682. It is surreal, like McDonalds next to the pyramids.
It is a winter’s day and the sun shines brightly upon the chateau, glittering gold in the crisp grey of the exterior world. A ticket gets me in and I am transported back in time. Gold ceilings, dreamy rococo architecture, paintings of the grand manner, a creaky floor, classical busts and portraits. I've seen this place in movies.
But there is only one movie I'm truly thinking of, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. Candy-colored, sumptuous, empty, introspective, and rich. The movie is Versailles, Marie Antoinette’s soul walks these grounds as she did on the silver screen.
When I walk in the Hall of Mirrors, I am walking in history. This was the place Marie Antoinette told Du Barry, the king’s mistress,"there are a lot of people at Versailles" on a New Years Day. It is crazy to walk in the same place such things took place. But I blend in, in my light pink coat and powder-blue tote I fit in this rose-colored world.
I walk among frozen gardens, it is so cold even though the sun is shining. But it is beautiful, nonetheless. Everything has been here for more than 300 years. And it’s archaic and special and I buy a hot chocolate to keep me warm. I realize that if I were to die right now, I would die very happy indeed.
I had a good run, I left a mark upon my cup with rose-colored lips. If that were my legacy, that would be enough. To go to the places we dreamed of is always enough.
A few long steps ahead and I’m at the Petit Trianon. Marie Antoinette’s home away from home. Far enough from Versailles to give a semblance of space, yet close enough for a vigorous walk. It is more modest yet no less regal. Robin’s egg-colored rooms filled with chaises and white accents. And she sits there. My own personal Mona Lisa.
No one stands guard, not a docent nor a glass-cover like the ones adorning the queen herself at the Louvre. No, this queen hangs on the wall, holding only a rose. Marie Antoinette a La Rose by the incredible Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun. She is bold yet unassuming. She is richly blue yet so powdery soft. I am moved, I shed a tear. A single ray of sunlight hits her, a dream realized.
Now in retrospective I began to see the dream more clearly for what it was. From Palais Garnier to Buckingham Palace to now Versailles. My trip was littered with castles. I was searching for the fantasy. I was searching for a rose-colored world.
If you are searching for castles in France, I’m certain there is a plethora to find. But if I can confess, I am most fond of one that sits on the outskirts of Paris. I love Versailles very much but I speak of la Chateau de la Belle au Bois Dormant. Sleeping Beauty’s castle. And yes, it’s a Disney castle.
I don’t betray my americaness as much I betray my californianess. I love Disneyland, I grew up going to it. I love the kitschy and the magical. My childhood is embedded in the shape of that pink castle and in the smell of the water at the Pirates of the Caribbean. So when I was going to be in Paris and I could visit Disneyland there for free (I was still working for Disney part-time), I had to see that castle against a winter sky. And it was a sight.
More fair than the one in Disneyland herself, more classical, more ornate, more pink and more beautiful. I know my favorite now.
The memory of my visit hangs in my mind like a dream. A sweet return to childhood in a different albeit familiar world. I know this place and I do not. She is like a dream I have forgotten in the morning yet still feel in my bones. There is a Pirates of the Caribbean ride but not quite the same. The little Fantasyland rides are there but not quite exactly what they were. And most importantly, and most wonderfully, their castle hides a dragon underneath.
I walked carefully through the icy floor as it becomes very slippery in winter. A black dragon in green light, spiky horns with red eyes and steamy nostrils. An impressive animatronic, but I like the metaphor better. I love a dragon. I love fantasy.
And I am in the realm of fantasy because everything is pink-colored. Literally. The palette of Disneyland Paris is pink, most of its buildings from the creamy rose hotel to the pastel pink decor of Fantasyland carry that hue. And so I am rose-colored, in a pink coat, pink sweatshirt, and pink mickey ears. I belong here.
I dreamed about this trip, I manifested this trip. I had queued a bunch of posts for tumblr that reflected what I wanted out of my travels. A cinderella quote for the day I happened to arrive in Disneyland Paris. Destiny, fate, self-fulfilled prophecy. All three I apply.
I sat by the Cinderella fountain in Fantasyland and felt my heart very hard.
I’m ill-prepared, I’d say, when I travel because I knew I was visiting Paris in winter and didn’t think to bring a scarf. I don’t know why. It sorta slipped my mind.
Nevertheless I purchased two scarves at a little flea market. One grey, one pink. The duality of life. A grey world, a pink world. Choose.
I wore grey for the dark of the night I climbed the Eiffel tower. A city in lights, a glimmering obelisk, and the best crepes I’ve had in my life. I wore pink for the morning I climbed Notre-Dame de Paris. A city in watercolors, a sea of gargoyles, and the most steps I’ve walked in my life.
Two impressionist museums nestled in my heart, Musee d’Orsay and Musee de l’Orangerie. My most beloved Manet, Olympia, at d’Orsay. The most beautiful Monet, Les Nympheas, at l’Orangerie. Naturalism and magic, finding the beauty in the ordinary. A prostitute is Venus re-incarnated, water lilies are worth dedicating a large tableau to.
Monet’s Water Lilies I could write forever about. Four large painting cover a white oval room. It’s a classic museum visit in Paris, tourists take pictures in front of them. I’m not different, I pose and ask someone to take my picture.
It moves the spirit to see them. In their pastel shades, purple, pink, green, blue, the world blends in this snapshot of nature’s eternity. A moment in time, what is now famous was misunderstood upon release. People were perplexed that Monet chose this subject matter. Everything he could have filled these large canvases with and he chose the flowers floating in his garden at Giverny.
Sometimes people forget the language of flowers. They speak rather gently but they speak nonetheless. There is peace to be found among the water lilies on a winter’s day. It is to hold summer and spring through the window of art, enough to capture it once and forever. Where blue is warm and pink is its hue.
I bought macarons at Versailles.
Yes, I did because when in Rome, well, when in Versailles, you must. Sometimes the cliches are lovely for a reason. Sometimes the symbols insistent on themselves.
I bought a box of Laduree macarons that I put in my fridge. The next morning, as the sun was rising, I exited my apartment. I put an entire rose macaron in my mouth, my breakfast as it were. And there, below a very pink morning sky, in my powder-pink coat, and a rose macaron melting in my mouth, I reached my thesis at last.
Yes, life is rose-colored. But it’s only rose-colored to those that will it so. Certainly hard times will come, and these will past swiftly as moods and weathers and days. Yet I cannot live in a world that doesn’t allow pink mornings and afternoons and even macarons.
My world is rose-colored, no glasses needed. The tint I carry in my soul. This is my belief. My thesis for life achieved at twenty-six in Paris.
If you asked me right now where I would want to be buried if I died I would say Paris. Kind of ridiculous since I’ve only been there once. Perhaps I’m just like every other person in the world who has been enraptured by the city of lights. I’m sure the Parisians would agree. Or disagree, who knows?
But perhaps I am just a simple girl who only needs to feel something once to know it’s true. Yes, I would like to be buried in Paris. Yes, there is no other place.
La vie est rose.
