Paris Postcards

Three decades of friendship, a few croissants, and a city that never gets old.

Some trips are about the destination.

And some are about who you get to experience it with.

This Paris trip was a little bit of both.

There is something incredibly special about travelling with someone who has known you for more than three decades. Someone who remembers every version of you .. the younger you, the more chaotic you, the dressed-up you, the tired you .. and who can still make you laugh until your stomach hurts.

So, Paris with my best friend felt less like a trip and more like adding another chapter to a very long story.

We walked.

A lot.

Down little streets we hadn't planned on finding, past beautiful balconies and flower-filled windows, through busy cafés and quiet corners. We wandered without needing much of an itinerary, because sometimes the best way to see Paris is simply to let the city lead you.

There were, naturally, croissants. Because can you really come to Paris and not eat a croissant every morning?

There were long coffees, little conversations that somehow lasted hours, spontaneous stops, plenty of people-watching and the inevitable “Wait, let's just have a look in here.” Those are the moments I love most when travelling.

Not necessarily the big ones, but the tiny ones that become memories without you realising it. A pastry shared between two friends. A photograph taken in the middle of the street. Laughing about something only the two of you understand.

Getting slightly lost and deciding it doesn't matter…After more than 30 years of friendship, you don't need to fill every silence. You can walk side by side without talking. You can change the day's plans five times.

You can sit across from each other at dinner and communicate entirely with a look. And somehow, travelling together reminds you just how much life you've lived alongside one another. Paris gave us the backdrop, but the real luxury was having the time to simply be together.

To explore. To eat. To laugh. To take far too many photographs.

To create new memories on top of all the old ones.

If these photographs feel a little like postcards, that's exactly how I want to remember this trip. Little fragments of Paris. The architecture. The streets. The food. The outfits. The morning light. The evening glow.

And, most importantly, the two of us somewhere in the middle of it all.

Because perhaps that is the magic of Paris. You can come back after years and somehow still discover something new…. But I think the real magic is returning with someone who has been there through so much of your life, and realising that, after all these years, you still have so much more to discover together.

Paris, until next time…

And to my best friend, cousis slash sister of three decades and counting … here's to the next postcard.