Europe is cold!

Very cold. Yes it is cold. Freezing!

Therefore, there are many shops selling leather gloves and furry hats in fashionable European cities that more than you could encounter in Istanbul. I started the habit of ‘never without my gloves’ and wear those beautiful gloves in Milano.

After hot Caribbean seas, I found myself again among Milano tramways and Paris’s old buildings that actually never get old. Yes, I returned to Europe, and Europe is cold. Very cold…

Old Parisian women who actually never get old Like Paris`s buildings walk along the streets connecting to Etoile with their furs and gloves on, and shop for Xmas, you can witness the other side of the city in tourists from all around the world coming to Paris to spend their time in Christmas. Hundreds of people taking photos around Eiffel, people lost in shopping on Champ-Elysees and buying Macaron from Laduree and Japanese taking selfies in front of Louis Vuitton as it is a museum, a strange attitude I have encountered all around the world.

Being a tourist is a hard occupation. You always have to be in an attraction! You need to hop from one museum to another church, you need to tour the city on a fast and noisy bus, you need to take selfies in front of every building while trying to hold on to your shopping bag, when worn to the bone, you have to sit down at a very crowded touristic café and be exposed to bad service while paying an unbeliavble amount to café and desert, and finally that 3 to 4 days of vacation is over while you are shopping for your family and friends. Furthermore you will take photos of everywhere with your god knows how many pixel camera and spend hours to upload and arrange them in your laptops then create memories destined to be forgotten in a computer file.

I will never be a tourist. I do not like visiting museums. Seldom if I want to have a scent of history and if there are magnificent structures like Notre Dame, Milano Duomo or Egyptian Pyramids, then I visit them just one time in my life just for 20 minutes or an hour. Otherwise, I want to spend my tie as locals do in a I city I am currently at. I read books in parks, I shop from grocery stores and of course I follow good restaurants, always keeping my champagne or wine in stock and walk along streets I like best, if possible on back streets not crowded by tourists and inch by inch…

Only then I can have the unique scent of the city. Therefore never be a tourist… Live the city… allocate your memory no to the times you spent for your camera but enrich your memory album with scents, tastes and images. Be sure your memory will make you happier! I only recommend you one thing to do, write… I always write. A notebook in hand, I write down what am I doing where, what my current mood and feelings tell me. Then when the pictures in your memory begin to fade away one day, the things you write will recall those memories a lot better than the photos you take. Photos will not make you remember what you felt. Writings do and more, they will make you relive those moments…

I am sure there is nothing that has not been previously written about Paris. Therefore I will not write what to do during Xmas in Paris like a tourist guide. The only thing I can say is I love Paris cold…