My favorite city that I visited during this past summer abroad with Forum-Nexus was definitely Paris. At heart, I was born to live in a city and it took me going on this trip to realize that, after visiting such a wide array of cities. My summer abroad helped me discover that I really love people; people are what make the world go round.
The second I visited the Eiffel Tower, I knew Paris was the place for me. When I say this, I mean that literally on the bus ride to the Eiffel, I knew it would be my kind of place. I was supposed to go to London for the weekend, but I decided to cancel it because I didn’t want to spend another second away from my favorite city.
Everything was perfect for me in Paris. I loved how pretty much everything was relatively modern in style, which is very appealing to me. Paris was beautiful in that although it has a lot of history, it wasn’t old in appearance and everything was well maintained. This is in direct opposition to a city like Rome. Don’t get me wrong, Rome was awesome, in that I love Roman history, so it was great to see everything in real life and not in a textbook. However, I really didn’t like how most of the buildings looked too old for my taste. I will most likely visit the city again (just because it’s a city), but I could never live there.
The locals of Paris are even more interesting than the city itself (and also the Louvre is my favorite museum of all time – like what?! How do you make something that awesome? I could picture myself going there at least once a month as a local). For these people, it is normal to buy a bottle of red wine, and then have a picnic with friends right after work along the canals or next to the Eiffel Tower…what?! In addition to this, anyone can tell that it is also a busy city, just based on how fast people walk. If you were to simply walk around the city, you could see that people have places to be in the morning (everyone was dressed so nice too by the way) and I love that. I love cities where it has, for lack of a better word, a chill vibe, and yet you would be kept busy from work. The way I see it, Barcelona is a very chill city (my second favorite city of all time), which is something I love about it. On the other hand, Milan is all work and no play. Paris is the perfect blend of the two cities, and is quite possibly where I will end up. By the way, if you didn’t know this, they also have the best healthcare system in the entire world and I want to end up somewhere in the medical field when I grow up.
Paris is literally the perfect city for me, offering everything I could ever want. In addition, it is in the perfect geographical location in Europe as well, with me being able to visit my other favorite city (Barcelona) on the left, and being able to visit the entirety of Italy on the right. Long story short, I want to end up here.
By: Jacob C., FN ’17 alumni