Engagement Story

Amazingly, it's been almost a year since Arlen proposed. This seems like as good a time as any to tell the story, seeing as I promised all those months ago. Time really flies... but I got there eventually!

The day was December 24th, and we were in the midst of our amazing and totally fun London-Paris vacation. This was our first full day in Paris, after having spent a week in England and taking the Chunnel over.

We set out that morning with our backpack in tow. The backpack was something we had used the whole trip to carry water, snacks, maps, hats, and the like with us, but there was one pocket that Arlen was very keen on keeping shut. Every time I started rummaging around looking for a pencil or something, he told me to stop. His reasoning was that our passports were in there and he didn't want to run the risk of losing them. This was true, and it was a good and valid reason for keeping it shut-- but there was something else in there that was going to become important today.

We spent our first morning at the Eiffel Tower, where we got some nice (although hazy) views of the city, ate lunch at a little cafe, and walked up and down the Seine, stopping at the Trocadero and Grand Palais along the way. Next on the agenda was the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur (Basilica of the Sacred Heart) in the late afternoon.



Sacre-Coeur is up near the north end of Paris, and was fairly out-of-the-way compared to everything else we had seen that day, but it was definitely on our list of places to see on the trip. We took a train as far as we could, and then walked up several *long* flights of stairs in lieu of taking the funicular up the hill. Once we were at the top, we had a great view of the basilica and Paris in general, although both were somewhat obstructed by the tons of people listening to a French guy with a guitar singing Beatles songs in English (badly!).


We made our way to the entrance for the stairs that led to the top of the tower and began climbing. There were several scenic vistas along the way that were good places to catch our breath, look at the city, and admire the statuary and gargoyles.



The last spiral staircase was the worst, made even more tiring because Arlen kept running far ahead of me, and I kept trying to catch up, so he would go even faster to widen the gap, so I would pick up the pace and... needless to say, we were pretty tired by the time we finally got to the top.

There weren't very many people on the topmost level of the basilica, and the view was spectacular, particularly since the sun was setting. We caught our breath and enjoyed the scenery, and that was when Arlen pulled the ring out and proposed. It had been in the backpack the entire trip, and apparently he had just been waiting for the right moment to pop the question. His running ahead on the staircase was his attempt to make the backpack-to-pocket transfer without being seen.


I only teared up a little when I said "yes."









... and then we went to EuroDisney.

THE END!