I Lucked Into This Concert

Stephanie arrives in Paris at 6am after an overnight coach bus and ferry from London — no sleep, no plan, just a paper map and a Lonely Planet she's definitely not being paid to mention.

She wanders along the Seine, naps in the Jardin de Tuileries with her backpack as a pillow, and somehow ends up at a free concert under the Eiffel Tower with two girls she just met, stolen hostel blankets, and a bottle of wine. The concert turns out to feature Andrea Bocelli. The finale is Handel's Messiah. The heavens open right on cue.

Some days you plan. And then there's this day.

00:00 Intro
00:35 Arriving in Paris on No Sleep
01:18 Wandering the Seine
03:00 Nap in the Tuileries
03:45 Hostel Friends
04:21 Picnic Under the Eiffel Tower
04:59 Wait — That's Andrea Bocelli
05:40 Handel's Messiah and the Rain
06:27 Until Next Time

Transcript

Stephanie 0:01

Hello, I'm Stephanie Arapian and this is The Centered Creator Podcast. I tell stories from my creative life, my travels, my many questionable decisions, and what I've learned about being human along the way. This is the story of my first solo trip, a Parisian nap and a concert I stumbled into completely by accident that I just found out while editing this was kind of a big deal oh my God. So, my first real trip solo was kind of crazy in a chaotic way, but amazing as well. I arrived in Paris at 6:00 AM and this was after an overnight ferry from London to Paris. So I was actually in a big one of those coach buses, I was a student, we're getting the cheapest way possible, which was obviously a coach bus. So the coach bus took us from London to Dover. Dover in a ferry over to Calais and then Calais drove to Paris. And I'm getting in at 6:00 AM and I have not slept. I don't know about you, but I cannot sleep on coach buses very well. It's almost worse than on planes for me actually. And I'm arriving very sleep deprived, but I'm so like, oh, this is so cool. Getting off at the station and figuring out where I need to go to get to my hostel. And I knew it was too early to check in, but you know, go there, maybe drop off the big heavy backpack and the shops are just opening and it's like this fresh spring morning. Okay, not spring summer. So it's this fresh morning with dew on the ground and everything's freshly cleaned, but still with some urban city smells. But overtaken slowly by like the smell of fromagerie and bakeries and all the cool smells and sounds and sights of Paris. And so I get to the hostel and it's way too early to check in, obviously, but they allow me to put my backpack down and reduce it down to a day pack at the very least. And again, I'm exhausted so I don't know what to do. And this is the days before we had like an app for that. Maybe I'm dating myself here, but I had a paper map and my little guide of, I think I was using Lonely Planet at the time. This is not a sponsorship. Could be find me, pay me. I was using one of those travel guidebooks to figure out a couple places that I wanted to go and I had a little map in there. And then obviously I had a Paris City map, but I was kind of, just wandering. And I trusted myself mostly to be able to find my way back to some kind of tourist sightseeing point. So I wandered a bit. I ended up walking along the Seine and I made it to the Notre Dame, and then I was wandering some more and I ended up at some lovely museum buildings. And I found eventually the tulip garden, I'm gonna say this badly, but the Jardin de Tuileries, and oh, this is beautiful. And it had gotten a little later in the morning at that point, and I was again very tired. And now I've walked a lot more too. And I saw all these people just out enjoying the garden and the day and there are picnics and people are just studying and reading books and lying down. And I thought lying down, oh, if they can lie down, maybe I can just kind of, take a nap. So I did, I took a nap in the Tulip Gardens. My backpack was my headrest. I don't know how long I was out, maybe an hour or two, I don't know. I took a nice long nap and then I wandered around for food and, stopped by a couple of I guess you could say, Paris Street food? It's baguettes and bread and cheese and stuff. It's delicious. I don't remember the flavors so much as I remember being like, I'm in Paris. I eventually got back to the hostel. It was finally time that I could check in. I got to my room. It's one of those six person dormitories. I did try to always go for women only because that was my measure of safety and boundaries. And I met two other girls that were staying in the room. And as you do, you're just kinda like, Hey, how long you here for? What have you been doing? Have you explored anything yet? What is your plans? We became kind of like quick friends and they invited me to go to this concert that they had heard about and it was a free concert. And I was like, okay, sure. I have nothing going on. Very easy invitation to say yes to. We stopped by a wine shop, obviously on our way over and picked up a bottle or three of wine. We got baguettes, we got more cheeses and some meats, and had our little charcuterie basically that we were making up on the fly. We kind of stole the blankets of our beds in the hostel for picnic blankets, and we made it to the Eiffel Tower and the Champ de Mars. And I realized this is a massive free public concert. They have screens and those huge, speakers, at different points all through the garden. This is very large. You can go look at on a map, it's large. And there was a full orchestra right below the garden by the Eiffel Tower. And I'm like, oh, this is, this is amazing. And there's just so many people there and everybody's just relaxed and enjoying themselves. And I don't actually even remember what these girls looked like. I don't remember their names, their faces. I just remember the feeling that I had of, wow. We're just chatting and getting to know each other and listening to this amazing music. And I'm in this new city and hearing these full concerts and just loving life. And the concert, by the way, Andrea Bocelli, like what? I lucked into this concert. Okay. Who knew? And they end the concert with Handel's Messiah. And as they start, the clouds start rolling in. Like, this is a cinematic moment that I was not predicting. As the music starts playing for the final song Handel's Messiah, the clouds get very ominous and very dark. But the concert ends, we've managed to make it through without any rain. But Handel's Messiah, if you've ever heard it, it's very dramatic. And by the time it closed, the heavens opened and it started raining and everybody on the green is hastily gathering up all their stuff and opening up umbrellas- who brought an umbrella? I did not- using any blankets or newspapers or whatever they could find to like shelter. And then we're all running to the side streets and trying to figure out different awnings to sit under, but we're all joyfully laughing as we're doing it and just being like, yeah, can you believe that just happened? This was amazing experience. And of course, the rain held off just long enough for us to enjoy our concert and that was my very first day in Paris on a solo trip ever for me. And I was addicted. What an amazing first experience. I just went with the flow and said yes to maybe, to wandering to, being open to the invitation of what was there. Until next time, take care.