Nothing but a Dreamer?

So, as you may remember from Sunday, two of my cousins are currently in Paris. Where I used to live. A lifetime ago.

I've been back there a few times since then, but it's one of those cities that you kind of always want to go back to. Or at least it is for me. Of course, to be honest, depending on my mood, I might say I feel the same way about New York City, Montreal, Vancouver, San Francisco, London, and a number of other places.

Even so, typically, the places that I make an effort to get back to are places where I know people - even if the cities aren't all that exciting to me. So most of the places where I don't know people kind of take a back seat.

But, with my cousins in Paris - and with the knowledge that Christopher and I are hoping to go to Paris next spring to celebrate one of the milestone anniversaries of my time in Paris - it's hard not to daydream about it.

Today, that kind of came to a head when one of my cousins sent me a few photos of the street I used to live on. Sure, the street seems to have gone downhill (there was a lot of graffiti), but there also seemed to have been a lot of construction going on, which is a good sign.

And, somehow, they stumbled across the actual building I lived in. My apartment faced the street on the ground floor. So when they took a picture of the building, they were taking a picture of my actual apartment.

I swear to you that I did not get teary over the photo. (I may have gotten teary a bit later while thinking about what my year in the apartment in the photo has meant to my life, but that's a whole different idea.) But while trying to work on a really bad edit at work, I have to admit that the photo (which I kept up in a secondary browser at the back of my screen) sent me into a couple of hours of daydreaming.

On the plus side, though, considering that we already have the framework of plans for taking our trip next spring, I don't have to say that I'm "nothing but a dreamer" - because I can say that I'm also a planner. And if we learned anything from Sunday's post, we know how much that means to me.