You know what nobody talks about when they come back from Paris? The smell of wet cigarettes mixed with fresh bread that hits you when you turn down those narrow streets behind Montmartre. Everyone’s always going on about the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, but I swear the real magic is in the places where your phone loses signal and you have to actually look around.

I remember this one morning, must have been my third or fourth trip there, when I got completely lost trying to find some museum that probably wasn’t even worth it. Started raining, that fine Paris drizzle that soaks through your jacket without you noticing, and I ducked into this covered passage called Galerie Vivienne. Not because I knew what it was or anything. Just because it was dry.

The floor was this intricate mosaic that squeaked under my wet shoes and there were maybe six people in the whole place, all of them looking like they belonged there in ways I never would. There was this old bookshop with stacks of novels in languages I couldn’t identify and a tea shop where the owner was hand-lettering price signs in the most beautiful script I’ve ever seen. I bought nothing. Just stood there feeling like I’d accidentally wandered into someone else’s Tuesday afternoon.

That’s the thing about Paris that gets me. The city everyone thinks they know from movies and Instagram posts, but then you find yourself in Père Lachaise cemetery on a foggy day and it feels more like a small town than anything touristy. The graves are all crumbling and overgrown, cats everywhere, and you can hear kids playing soccer in some unseen courtyard beyond the walls.

Or the Promenade Plantée, this elevated park they built on an old railway line. Sounds boring when I say it like that. But walking through it feels like you’re floating above the city, watching people in their apartments make coffee and argue and hang laundry, and somehow you’re both completely invisible and completely present at the same time.

I guess what bothers me is how we all seem to need permission to enjoy things. Like Paris has to be the Champs-Élysées or it doesn’t count. But the best parts were always the accidents. Getting off the metro at the wrong stop and finding that tiny market on Rue des Martyrs where the cheese guy remembered my terrible French accent from three days before. Or spending an hour in the Musée Rodin’s garden, not even looking at sculptures, just watching this old man feed sparrows from a paper bag.

Maybe that’s just what being 48 does to you. Makes you notice the stuff that doesn’t fit in guidebooks. The way the light hits those iron balconies at 4 PM, or how the city sounds different when it rains.

I wonder if the Paris in my head even exists anymore, or if it was always just the version I needed it to be…