For my lovely wife and me, our first experiences with Paris happened when we were tweens. For her, it was 2004, and my first visit to Paris occurred in 1994.

Yesterday we went hunting for the location of one of the photos with Sofya near the Notre-Dame de Paris. And, yes, we were able to make a pretty decent reconstruction of that old shot — just switch between the two first images

My visit was a school trip. Museums, riverboat tours, Paris Disneyland, and getting lost with Marina Murova in the middle of the city. That was a true adventure!

However, out of the five film rolls I used during that trip, there are only two shots with me. In one of them, that’s only a reflection in a window. That’s the thing that usually happens to me as since I was a child, I have mostly been the person beside the camera, not the other way around.

And both of these shots are pretty tough to reconstruct. Because, yes, one of them is only a reflection and the other is made in Paris Disneyland which is closed at the moment (we even have tickets, but we cannot go there!)

Since then, both of us have visited Paris and other places in France on multiple occasions. My wife had regular business trips to the company’s office in Massy over the past few years, the office where she’s starting to work now.

I’m sure we will try to recreate some of the past experiences while getting some new ones at the same moment!

In 2013, I was traveling through different European countries with my bike. On the 18th of July, I arrived from Brussels on Thalys, right in time to get to a ‘Free Navalny’ rally that was organized by Maria Khachaturyan. Seven years have passed, and Navalny is in jail again. Somehow many of the past visits to Paris reverberate through time and reach the modern days.

On the happier note, one of the most satisfying things for me is that the mountains are so much closer now. Not only that but the fact that the area around Paris is also quite hilly. This is something that definitely reminds me of Moscow.

I wasn’t even aware how used I become to living in an absolutely flat land until we had to drive to my wife’s office on the 2nd of April. Don’t get me wrong, I love how it is in the Netherlands. And the first hours of driving in France were a bit uncomfortable for me. But I can’t wait until the lockdown ends and we have a chance to drive around Paris and even go further

So, if you have any recommendations on which places around Paris we should visit first, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment