Romance on the Metro

Summer love in Paris

Photo by Margarida Louro on Unsplash

In my mind’s eye, the metro ticket is wrinkled and blue, but when I find it in the scrapbook, it turns out to be smooth and green. It is stuck to the back of the only photo I have to prove I once had a French boyfriend.

It was the summer of 2000, and I was 19, studying abroad in Paris. My fellow students and I lived in a hostel that had some sort of connection with a…