Welcome readers... AGAIN to the new and improved Library Girls Travel Blog. When we last left off, your favorite blogesses, Lizzie and Emma stopped writing about 5 years ago.
It's a lapse we'd rather not repeat. For this, we apologize and will try to do better by you, our loyal readers.
Starting again is difficult after a half decade hiatus, but rest assured, we'll be back with gusto and planning ANOTHER trip to Europe. The apple is not falling far from our travel tree as we will, once again, be visiting the metropolitan cities of London and Paris. This time, we will be travelling with Taylor and (the new adult person) Scout!
This trip has been a long time in the planning. Scout, as a wee Kindergarten lass, and I were in a low place. We had moved to a smaller place together and were not in any financial position to do anything but dream of bigger things. In our many chats, I asked Scout to give me a dream for her Senior Trip; a dream SO big that when we achieved it, it would be epic. She said, "I want us to go to Paris together.".
Paris: a place that I had dreamed about for so long that the mere thought of it made my heart flutter.
Paris: the magnificent city where I could use my toddler-status French language that I studied in high school.
Paris: a destination so far away that the THOUGHT of going made my wallet weep dusty tears.
Paris: a 13 year time period to shoot for the goal to make Scout's dream a reality.
As you all know, I made it to Paris without Scout in 2009 as an addition to mine and Lizzie's trip to London. I asked permission from Scout and she said I was forbidden to do one thing and I was to wait until we were together: Go to Disneyland Paris, so I didn't. I spent my solo time wandering the Père Lachaise cemetery and getting lost in the haute couture underbelly of Paris (no seriously... I didn't want to be there because I didn't belong there !).
There's a quote that has stayed with me for a long time. I heard it many years ago before my own trip to Paris. Gwyneth Paltrow had recounted her first trip to Paris with her father when she was 11 years old. Her father had said to her, "I wanted your first trip to Paris to be with the one man who is going to love you for the rest of your life."
This is what I'll say to Scout when it's a quiet time in Paris, "I wanted your first trip to Paris to be with me, the mother who has loved you since the day you were born and will continue to love you for the rest of your life."
Over all of the challenges in our lives, we'll always have each other. With everything against us, we will have made it to our destination together. I look forward to that day and I can't wait to share it with her and all of you.
xoxo
Emma
