Gripped by the tight leather of the back seat, we comfortably glided above the Seine at good speed, the way it’s only possible in Parisian traffic well into the night. Out the window, like a postcard, Notre Dame; perfectly lit against the black backdrop, which incidentally is the best way to see the church these days, as the darkness helps hide all the building work taking place on site. Suddenly, I was not tired from the trip, nor was I concerned with the fact that I had no idea where the taxi driver would announce our destination. I was in Paris, the familiar Paris we all know, the one we have seen countless of times in movies, paintings and merchandise. Like that moment when you find yourself walking down a brownstone street in NYC and you think to yourself, of course I know this street, even though you have never actually walked your two feet down such a place.

I recently read a travel piece from some big-deal publication, which claimed to have conducted a survey in which people voted on the world’s most overrated tourist attractions. Three of the top 10 were in Paris. That same publication named Paris, by popular vote, as the world’s unfriendliest city. These ideas were still fresh in my mind as we arrived to a rambunctious neighborhood, where the taxi driver finally declared our journey complete. He left me and my daughter in the vehicle, while he walked up and down the street, looking for our hotel. He wasn’t overtly friendly, or smiled much at all, but he did more than was necessary to be of service, and once we were sorted, he went on his way.

Paris is the perfect destination for a trip for two. Of course, most people will think to take their romantic love, but I went with an even better companion: my daughter. A mother and daughter trip to the City of Lights is exactly as the Hollywood version unravelling in your mind right now. A montage of sweet pastries enjoyed between takes of famous views. A train ride, a boat ride, a crowd in the background while you race across the pyramid courtyard of the Louvre on a sunny autumn afternoon. There never is a moment in a Hollywood montage where characters stop to consider the cost of their incredibly overpriced croissant, or when the crowd outside the Eiffel Tower borders on the unbearable and perhaps dangerous. That’s because montages, just like memories of trips we have enjoyed, put aside the mundane in order to make space for the joie de vivre.

Someone who makes the effort to go to the biggest art museum in the world, and comes out saying it is overrated, is clearly missing something in their lives that no amount of travel can cure. When you finally get to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and take a look at the expanse of urban drama arranged neatly into rows of architectural achievement, you feel humbled. How can anyone walk away from that saying “nah, it wasn’t all that”?

We were waiting for our boat taxi at some point, when a lady sitting nearby heard us speak in Spanish. She did what every Latina sister would: broke into super fast Spanish, relieved to be able to express herself. She was on the last day of a month-long tour across three European countries. She was impressed with Rome, loved Madrid, but of Paris, she shrugged and asked me how much I had paid for my hotel. Maybe it’s me, I began to think, maybe I am overtly romanticizing a place that is less wonderful than it is supposed to be. Then she made a racist comment concerning immigrants in the city, and I suddenly remembered that not everyone who takes a culture trip already has an education.

Paris, like most big cities in the world, has the magnificent advantage of hosting a wide variety of cultures. It is by far the best feature of the renowned large cities. The Haitian man working the booth in the Metro completes my memories of Paris, like the Jamaican taxi driver in NYC, like the Turkish cook in London, who, last weekend, for no reason at all, gave my daughter a bottle of Ayran while we waited for a döner kebab. The people featuring the stories of our travels is why we travel. Otherwise, a photo of the Eiffel Tower is, indeed, overrated.