This may sound like heresy coming from someone who chose to move to France, but here is my honest truth: I didn’t like Paris.
I know, I know. It’s the City of Love, the pinnacle of culture, the backdrop for endless Instagram fantasies. I dreamed of it, too. Over the years, I lived in the 12th, the 15th, and the 16th Arrondissements—areas that all promised distinct Parisian charm. And yet, the whole experience was suffocating.
It’s the constant, grinding speed that gets to you. The energy is frantic, the noise is unrelenting, and the pressure to be on—to be chic, to be busy, to be seen—was exhausting. It felt like living inside a tightly wound spring that was constantly threatening to snap.
And then I had my moment of clarity: My mom was right.
When I was younger, she’d often say things like, “Why do you want to go to school in Paris? The taxi drivers are nuts, they drive on the sidewalks!
But when I was stuck in a tiny, overpriced apartment in the 16th, watching the crowds surge below, I realized my suffocation wasn’t the city’s fault; it was my inability to escape the pressure to perform that the city magnified. I was still chasing the loud, external validation—just in a French context.
The most valuable thing I learned in Paris was that my soul belongs in the country. It needs the silence, the space to breathe, and the time to notice the fog clinging to the horizon, not the rush of the metro.
Paris was a mirror that finally showed me what I didn’t want. Normandy is the home that showed me what I truly needed: silence, intention, and room to grow.
It turns out, escaping the big city pressure, whether it’s New York or Paris, is the first and hardest step toward finding your slow living rhythm.
Have you ever chased a dream location only to realize your soul needed something quieter?
Until Next time
Christina
