Visiting Paris during COVID-19: Even during the pandemic, the city still shines

We start our time, naturally, by getting lost. We get out at the wrong metro station, and weave through the ruins and churches of the Latin Quarter and the art galleries of St Germain, following streets and laneways we kind of know are in the opposite direction of our hotel, mainly because they look worthy of being explored.

And it's a theme that continues. Restaurants and cafes are happy to be open. Museums showing they're at full capacity online usher us in when we tentatively ask if there are cancellations; hotel staff are simply happy to see travellers from outside Europe come back. In a city not necessarily renowned for its manners, we're treated with nothing but warmth, kindness, and empathy by the Parisians we encounter.

Of course, there are changes to the city.

You'll glimpse the cranes before you see Notre Dame: stripped down, surrounded by the buzz of construction and wrapped in the gauze of scaffolding, but still standing. It burned in April 2019 and, almost three years later, reconstruction and restoration continues. Scrubbed of smoke and soot, the ceiling open to the stars, it almost feels like it stands in defiance of time and the elements: fire simply couldn't break it. The only discomfort is that as always, the crowds swarm around its skirts.

Breaking free from the crowd, we head across to the ile Saint-Louis to see if our favourite wine shop is still there. I'd first visited L'Etiquette, a boutique organic and biological wine store over a decade ago, and it was one of my favourite places in Paris. The owner, Hervé, helps us select a bottle of white. I ask him how it has been the last few years. Terrible 2020, he told me, with his store closed down temporarily. Great summer 2021, as the local council allowed him more tables on the streets. Now, as it turns to 2022 we'll see, he tells me, shrugging.

We meander again, back across to Shakespeare & Co bookstore, where I trash my credit card and ensure every book purchased is stamped and embellished with the store's iconic logo. Outside, a group of instagrammers take turns pretending to browse the second hand books: they have a bored stylist on standby with a hair-and-make up kit, and each has a rolling suitcase of clothes out of frame. We pass the same group the next day at the pyramids in the forecourt of The Louvre.

I try not to be too snotty about it: they're having their version of a genuine Parisian experience. I can't help but feel the five young girls squeezing into a selfie nearby, each wearing a different coloured, cheap and cheerful looking beret they clearly picked up at a tourist shop in a Five-for-€10 special, look like they're having more fun. That's until I pass a group of eight university friends who had lugged two cases of champagne to a picnic by the Seine.

The good weather has brought out the crowds, so we decide to grab lunch and picnic rather than be stuck with the masses. We settle on a quiet spot along the River, under the shade of a weeping willow whose branches tickle the waterways.

It's the kind of winter day that has us peeling off jackets and rolling up sleeves; perched on the edge with a bottle of wine and croque monsieur lunch, it's hard to believe we almost didn't have the nerve to travel here.

There is nothing particularly remarkable about our trip: we are tourists in Paris, ticking the boxes on tourist attractions, eating and drinking well, spending too much money. But what is remarkable is that we are doing something we were banned from doing for almost two years in Australia: travelling, and it feels like life is good again.

We tuck into our food, laughing at an old joke, trying to remember when we were last here, when I notice my husband's navy shirt coated in white specs.

"You've got something on you.. Something chalky", I say, squinting.

Suddenly my mohair jumper is also coated in white, which also streaks across my hair and into my eyes. It turns out there is a reason this picturesque little spot on the Seine was so quiet: we'd managed to sit right underneath two nesting fishing birds. We use up the last of our antibacterial hand wipes wiping bird poo out our hair and clothes.

Ah, Paris. Not everything here is magic: but even if there's a little poo on your shoe, in your eye or through your hair, it's still a wonderful place to be.