After Ireland, I traveled to France with Mark, beginning in Paris and continuing to Lyon.

Paris was my first experience of France, and what I remember most is how visually rich everything felt; names of writers carved into the exterior of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, the Art Nouveau metro entrances, and people sitting casually on the grass outside the Louvre Museum on a perfect fall day. We moved quickly through the Louvre, focused on a shortlist of works I had carried with me since high school art history. We spent a day at Palace of Versailles, walking through the Hall of Mirrors and out to Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon.

Our accommodations were far less glamorous: a bare-bones hostel with the thinnest mattress imaginable and a shared shower that I used once and Mark avoided entirely for the duration of our stay.

From Paris, we traveled to Lyon, where Mark was studying. The city was beautiful, though marked at the time by protests. There shops on the main street had broken glass, and we avoided that part of the city. We visited the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, which remains one of the most stunning interiors I have seen. We rode the funicular up the hill and walked the long set of steps leading to his host family’s home, which he had described often. I had my first praline tart in Lyon, and it remains one of my favorite small food memories from traveling.

Leaving Lyon, I almost missed my flight back to Paris. We woke up at 4:00 a.m., and Mark walked me down to the bus stop near his host family’s home. We had checked the schedules the night before—everything should have been running. He stayed with me until about 4:45, then headed back, assuming the rest of the trip would be straightforward. It wasn’t. The bus never came. By 5:15, I was still standing there alone.

I started walking toward the city center, not knowing what else to do. A taxi passed me with a passenger already inside, heading to the airport. The driver rolled down the window and told me the buses and trains were not running that morning—but said he would come back for me. I waited, hoping he would, and he did. The ride to the airport took about 45 minutes and cost roughly $120—far more than I had planned, but at that point it did not matter. When I arrived, the airport was packed. Somehow, people at security let me move ahead, and I made it onto the plane just as they were closing the door behind me.