Claire Chabaud-Tropéano was walking through the streets of Brooklyn, New York, wondering if that night was going to change her life forever.

That evening, Parisian Claire felt like she’d stepped into the New York City-based movies she’d grown up with: tree-lined streets, rows of townhouses, fall leaves under her feet, jack-o’-lanterns grinning at her from stoops.

“I remember walking in the streets of New York…and being like, ‘This party could be everything. Maybe it can be a pivot.’ Because I felt so bad in my life,” Claire tells CNN Travel.

“I remember being like, ‘Maybe it’s a moment, you’re in a movie, and something’s going to happen, and everything makes sense, and that’s why it was bad before.’ I’ve got a very, very vivid memory of that.”

It was Halloween 2019. Claire, then in he

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