I went to Paris abrasive-ly resistant to spending time in a country I was taught to hate. I left a beret-wearing Francophile shouting “Viva La France” at random intervals. The reason for the change was finding that France is a magical place where ordinary rules do not apply.

Here are the top ten things that make Paris a mystical wonderland:
11-Butter is not fattening.
10-Public pools have co-ed bathrooms and showers where no one is sexually harassed.
9-Bread, cheese and wine have their own places in the food pyramid.
8-The most one waits for a subway is not at all to thirty seconds on a normal day, and four minutes on a bad day.
7-The best thing to drink after a morning run is a coffee.
6- It is not necessary to tell people to turn off their cell phones before a movie.
5- Muscle relaxers are over-the-counter drugs.
4- Buying new clothes is not necessary when there are one-hundred years of the finest fabrics and designs at your disposal at a bevy of decently priced vintage houses throughout the city.
3- A forty-something woman can dance on the bar in a chain-link mesh shirt and still be the hottest thing in the club.
2- A photo of a topless women does not make a movie or an advertisement or a television show or a piece of art pornographic.
1- You can have two kids and a husband and still find yourself in a lesbian bar on New Years Eve.