I would be willing to bet the remainder of my jar of Nutella that I’m the only person reading this who’s on a train to Luxembourg. (And even if I’m not, all that’s left in the Nutella jar is the stuff stuck to the sides that I smeared around with my fingers SUCKERS.) I’ve got about an hour and 45 minutes to try to write as much as I can, but I’m still two weeks  and three countries behind. I think I’m going to have to accept the fact that once per week is the most I’ll be able to post updates, if I’m lucky. But while I’m rolling through the surprisingly lovely Moselle valley, let me tell you about Paris.

I’ll start with a confession. When the Eurostar pulled into Paris’s Gare du Nord, it marked the first time that I’ve ever been to a country in which the primary language isn’t English. And I’m 35 years old. If I weren’t married I wouldn’t admit that out of fear that I’d never be able to get a date. But that fact combined with the well-known French pride in their language meant I was super freaked out. I imagined that every time I opened my mouth I’d be giving myself away as an ignorant American who couldn’t be bothered to learn anything other than English, and that I might just as well walk around shouting, “Pass me the Freedom Fries, you bony foreigners!” Sophie speaks a little French, and I spent most of the train ride making her listen to me say over and over “Parlez-vouz anglais?” “Je ne parle pas en francais,” and “Oú sont les toilettes?” I also counted to ten in French repeatedly until I could do it quickly and without stopping, as if we were going to be met at the station by the Parisian version of Oscar the Grouch and quizzed under threat of being fed to le monstre patisserie.

But we weren’t. In fact the Gare du Nord train station was very much like a train station, and Sophie was even able to complete our transaction at the Metro ticket booth entirely in French. Which brings me to something that I’ve been wanting to mention: I’ve seen shows on television about modern day explorers who can trek across the African wilderness and can read the clouds and have memorized the length of their stride and know which tree has the bark that they can strip off to poison a monkey to use as bait to catch a wild boar that they then kill with the lid from their Fruitopia. But I suspect those guys wouldn’t be able to go two stops on the 6 train without needing directions from the guy selling batteries. Sophie and I however pride ourselves on being able to, within five minutes, understand and master any subway or tram system anywhere in the world. The Paris metro was no different, despite the system’s bizarre insistence that you open the train doors yourself.

And so we surfaced by our hotel in the 10th arrondissement and found the neighborhood surprisingly dense and diverse and working class, very much as if we’d gotten off the train in Flatbush. I should say here that, despite my language freak out, I had been incredibly excited to go to Paris. For me it was a legendary city of beauty and sophistication that I’d been depriving myself of for years. But after an afternoon exploring some of the neighborhoods while eating crepes, buying bread and cheese, and drinking coffee, I found Paris to be mostly gray, intimidating, and to smell a lot like pee. Also I couldn’t bring myself to talk to anyone — as soon as I opened my mouth, all the words I practiced disappeared, and I made noises like I’d just swallowed a bottle cap. That night we ate tripe and duck confit for dinner alongside a Swedish couple from Chicago, bought a demi bottle of Bordeaux at the convenience store and went to bed.

The next morning was bright and cloudless and cool, and we managed to discover the French word for “to go” (emporter) while buying coffee for our Sandeman’s walking tour. The tour guide, a young Argentine named Alex, led us from the Latin Quarter along the banks of the Seine, eventually leaving us in Faubourg St-Germain on the left bank. From there Sophie and I walked over to the Eiffel Tower, of which I can’t say much other than it’s just as impressive as it wants to be, then across the river to the Arc de Triumphe, which is less impressive than it wants to be and certainly less impressive than the gargantuan traffic circle around it encompassing 12 different streets.

Alex had mentioned that the Louvre had discounted admission from 6pm to 10pm that night. Visiting the Louvre was the number-one thing on my to-do list for Paris, so we bumped it up the schedule and headed in. The Louvre is ornately beautiful enough to be worth a visit even if all the paintings were by the guy who draws Sally Forth. And it’s huge — much larger than I imagined. Alex said he once timed himself walking from one end to the other without stopping to look at any art, and it took him 28 minutes. So, even though people who only look at the big-name masterworks in art museums have always filled me with silent disdain (or often loud disdain, sometimes involving throwing Slush Puppies), we decided to do just that. Winged Victory, the Venus Di Milo, then the Mona Lisa.

I’ve so often heard about how the Mona Lisa is a disappointment in person — it’s small, behind glass, behind ropes, in a gallery packed with intercontinental nincompoops — that I expected very little. But it just so happened that, since it was late, the gallery was relatively empty. We were able to get quite close to the painting, and I found myself kind of in awe. The Mona Lisa was right in front of me, looking old and lovely. I acutely felt something that had also brushed over me earlier as we were standing underneath the Eiffel tower. Both the tower and the Mona Lisa have always been symbols of Europe to me, and as such symbols of travel. They were things I always wanted to see, but in the back of my mind thought I might never get the chance to. But Lisa was smiling right there in front of me, and at that moment I realized that I was really in Europe. I’d made it. I’ve never been one to set goals for myself, but right then I understood that I must’ve had one, and that I’d accomplished it. I moved on to see the Wreck of the Medusa because it was used on the cover of a Pogues album, and then within a couple of hours was Louvred out.

Thursday, our last day in Paris, started with the Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris — which is grand and breathtaking but sits quietly in a residential neighborhood like its waiting for a bus — then continued with a long afternoon in the Musée d’Orsay, and ended with a night in Montmartre, the city’s red light district. We arrived there by a Metro station so deep underground that I suspect the engineers dug their way in from the previous stop and then realized there was a mountain on top of them. Since they’d already laid the tile and installed the vending machines, they proceeded to build a spiral staircase straight up through the center.

Around about the 639th step of that staircase, I was done with Paris. This seemed to be the city dumping my books in a final act of intimidation after keeping me in a constant state of anxiety and fear of being unable to talk to anyone. As we sat down in a café for dinner, I was ready to get the hell out of town. But then out of exhaustion I didn’t think to worry about how to talk. I was able to order our food, pay our bill, and communicate with the people at the tables around me, even though we all knew that we didn’t speak each other’s language. Suddenly I stopped feeling as if I was in the middle of an oral exam. And just like that I knew that I wasn’t going to worry about it anymore the rest of the time we’re on the road.

Then, I looked to my left. Montmarte sits on top of the highest hill in Paris, and our café’s front window looked straight down that hill through a narrow, beautiful street. Some soft clouds rolled through between the buildings leaning towards each other, and the sky changed to shades of blue and pink that must only exist in cities where artists can dream them into being. I saw the beauty I’d been missing, and the intimidation evaporated. We walked smiling through the dark streets, up the hill to the monumental Basilque du Sacré-Couer. At night all of Paris gathers on the steps in front of the church to drink wine out of plastic cups and laugh and gaze out on all of Paris spread out beneath them. We stood there, breathing in the cool night and looking at their city with them, and I finally felt like I was a part of it.