The first time I visited Paris in 2003, I was a young, hostel-hopping intern living in Germany on a microscopic paycheck. It still makes me smile to think about that trip: us friends carousing on the steps of Sacre Coeur with a bottle of German sekt; making a few extra bucks from Chinese tourists desperate to use our Louis Vuitton "purchase quota"; missing our hostel curfew and sleeping over at a flat full of Danish students where cheap champagne was so abundant we could theoretically brush our teeth with it; and enjoying the free dusk til dawn art festival Nuit Blanche, which was a dream for a euro-crunching backpacker. It was a fun moment in time so characteristic of carefree youth that I will always cherish.

My second visit to Paris over 10 years later felt like a lifetime apart from that trip—different, but in a wonderful way. This time, I experienced the Paris of movies—a city seemingly built for leisurely sipping café crèmes under the spring sun, intimate wine-soaked dinners, and romantic walks through winding cobblestone streets.

Enjoying Paris at a relaxed pace and with a loose agenda was delightful. We skipped the museum lines and walked through the city as much as we could, taking in all the beautiful sights, browsing vintage books by the Seine, peeking into lovely shops in Le Marais, breaking for coffees and cocktails, and treating ourselves to the most delicious Parisian fare. We had some wonderful dinners, thanks to friends with great taste: a classic entrecôte at Café des Musées, mind-blowingly delicious poultry at Le Coq Rico, and an unforgettable six-course dégustation at Pierre Sang at Oberkampf. Throw in nights of stumbling into random neighborhood bars and a naughty show at the Crazy Horse, and there wasn't much more I could want.

We had such a wonderful time that it makes it that much harder to be back to reality in New York. But these memories of Paris make me happy and hopeful that, just as that first trip was the opening salvo of an adventure-filled part of my life, this one could just be a taste of more lovely things to come in this new stage.