Love Locks

Paris is such an interesting city: buildings as fancy as wedding cakes, Metro stations saturated with urine and grime, boulangeries filled with fruit tarts and pastries and baguettes, and graffiti covering nearly everything. And, of course, Paris has romance. You see it everywhere: couples canoodling in Luxembourg Gardens or on benches in the Tuileries, for instance, or staring in each others' eyes over glasses of wine in some twilight cafe. I didn't find romance in Paris, but I did find a new way Parisians express their feelings for their sweethearts: love locks. I saw them first on the afternoon our group went to the Musee d'Orsay. We walked across a pedestrian that had wire fencing stretched out along the railings, and on that fencing were row upon row of locks with couples names written on them: Pierre + Vivienne, Jacques + Simone, the names went on and on. We saw the same thing on a bridge between Notre Dame and the Left Bank of the Seine. This is the way it works: you buy a padlock, get a Sharpie, write your beloved's name and yours on the lock, then attach it to one of these bridges. Last, but not least, you take they keys and toss them straight into the Seine, symbolizing the idea that you and your loved one will be locked together forever. I loved the idea--plus, a sharpie on a padlock beats a spray painted message on a fine French monument anyway.












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