A Tale of Three Cities

Every city has their symbol - something the rest of the world can identify them with. Some are easy, like San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge; but others - like New York, is it the Statue of Liberty? The Empire State Building? London, Big Ben or the Tower Bridge? - are more difficult. My two favourite cities in the world both, in my opinion, have easily identifiable symbols - Paris and the Eiffel Tower, and Toronto and the CN Tower. I don't know what people actually from Montreal would say is the symbol for their city, but in the short time I've been here I've identified the cross at the top of Mount Royal as my symbol.

Even though I was suffering from jetlag and a fair bit of nervousness over how everything would pan out in the coming months, some of my very favourite memories of Paris are of those first days I spent there in January 2007. I was a just turned 23 year old (an age I had always thought (and still do!) is so cool!), and more than anything I was so happy to be in Paris. I couldn't believe I was actually there, and that something I had thought about for so long had finally happened. That first week I spent an irordinate amount of time staring out the huge windows (really sliding doors) of the family friends' apt I was staying at, watching the sky over Paris and the Eiffel Tower. The family friends lived a little outside Paris, with an amazing view of the city from their fifth floor apt. My first night there I was sitting at the dining table on the internet, occasionally looking up and out from my emails, when the Eiffel Tower started sparkling. I didn't know it did that! I knew it lit up at night but the sparkles were new! (And they are incredible! The sparkling happens for the first 5-10 minutes of each hour (and one good thing about the winter is that it sparkles more) and it never failed to be exciting.) Sitting and staring out at lovely or happy views is one of the most relaxing things to do. At that apt, I liked thinking about all sorts of things, with Paris and the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop to my thoughts. Whenever I'm in Paris, I always feel thrilled whenever I see the Eiffel Tower from different parts of the city. I love the view of it from Place de la Concorde, or any of the bridges over the Seine, or from near the Pantheon. Or the really far away views of it from the 19th or 20th arrondissements. The best is when I am just walking along, and then out of nowhere I get a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower; always a highlight of my day.


The same goes for the CN Tower - I love seeing it from different parts of the city. My favourite view is looking at it from the east, but I also like how I can see it all the way down Yonge Street when I'm walking to Eglinton Station. Or like with the Eiffel Tower, it's fun to be surprised by it. I went running down by the lake a few times in the spring, and it'd be fun to be running along and then suddenly see it in front of me. Seeing it from a plane is also very cool. The CN Tower gets lit up in all different colours at night too - some nights red or purple or green. I've grown up with the CN Tower, and probably because you can see it from all over it, it really represents Toronto to me in some ways. Driving home along the 401 from the airport to my house, the CN Tower is visible (albeit it appears very small) so whenever I come back from somewhere else, it's one of the first things I see, and confirms to me that I'm home. When I move back to Toronto, I really want to live somewhere from where I can see the CN Tower, and spend lots of time staring out at it and thinking.

I like the big mountain in the middle of Montreal a lot. It's particularly nice right now as all the leaves have changed colour and so it's a canvas of reds, oranges, and yellows. I suspect it will look pretty in the winter too. I can see the cross at the top from my apt, and as is clear from what I wrote above, I love looking out windows at well-known symbols. The cross is also lit up at night (my favourite time to look at it) and, I am sure, enjoys watching over the city from high above.