Oh hi. Yes, we did go to Paris several weeks ago and I am only just now getting around to posting about it. We had a terrific trip and I am still basking in the glow of what really couldn’t have been a more perfect vacation. 

If you are looking for gorgeous photos of Paris sites, please refer to Elisabeth’s blog; she was in Paris right before we arrived, and in fact overlapped with us for one day, during which I got to meet her and her family in person!!!! (As with every blogger I’ve had the luck to meet in person or via zoom, she is both exactly like she is on her blog and also somehow more delightful and more beautiful offline.)                   

If you’re looking for some hot tips about what was good and what wasn’t good about our visit, you are in the right place. Below, I’ve lined up my landslides and letdowns.

Woot! Woot!s

My husband. Oh my goodness, my husband is a ROCKSTAR. He planned the entire trip, securing our plane, train, and Metro tickets; finding a hotel; researching when and how to obtain entry to the sites we wanted to see; planning day trips and booking travel to and from each city; creating an itinerary that hit all our must-sees without overloading us; securing tickets at the ideal times on the ideal days for each site; figuring out what to do about cell phone service while we were in Europe; and then getting us to each place in the most efficient and pleasant way possible each day. It was so much work and I did none of it. All I had to do during the planning stages was occasionally weigh in on things, suggest potential activities, and offer moral support. All I had to do during the trip itself was show up. It was fabulous. I don’t think I could ever have come up with such a well-planned vacation on my own. Oh also: his French is leaps and bounds ahead of mine, and at one restaurant, the server asked us where we were from. (I find this a difficult question to answer, by the way. I feel like we wear our Americanness like a glaring red-white-and-blue baseball jersey. I always want to respond with the name of our state, but my husband always simply says, “We’re from the United States.” That does seem to do the trick.) When he told this server we were from the States, she shook her head in disbelief and said, “But your French is so good! Your pronunciation is excellent.” Way to go, husband! 

Carla. You guys, Carla was a superstar traveler. From the instant we left the house to the moment we returned to the States, she was excited, curious, eager, and game for anything. She loved all the museums we visited. She enthusiastically listened to a (quite long and somewhat boring) audio tour of Chateau de Fontainebleau. She put in 7 to 10 miles of walking, from about 7:00 am to 10:00 pm (on average), for eight consecutive days. She ate (some of the) food. She went into every church and cathedral I wanted to peek inside. We had occasional mother/daughter conflicts, but beyond that, she did not whine or complain at all and in fact seemed delighted by and interested in everything we saw. (With the possible exception of the churches. She was into them when we were inside, but when we expressed interest in yet another church, she voted against going in.) I want to go on all the trips with her. (She has suggested Australia as our next big vacation; my husband and I are less enthusiastic, simply because of the lengthy plane ride.) 

AirFrance. We flew AirFrance to and from Paris, and it was a fabulous airline. My husband found a ridiculously good deal on premium economy seats, and I was all set for American-style premium economy, as in, economy seating with slightly more leg room. But no! AirFrance premium economy is just a step below Business Class! We got to hang out in the AirFrance lounge before our flight. We got priority access to the security line and priority boarding. We got pillows and blankets and cute little dopp kits each way, we got Champagne just after each takeoff. We had nice roomy seats that lay back. It was one of the best flying experiences I’ve ever had. 

Our Louvre Tour Guide. We decided that we wanted a tour guide for the Louvre, because a) it’s so big and overwhelming, and b) we wanted to skip the line. My husband found a tour company online (don’t ask me how; he did a ton of research) who offered a three hour “Louvre highlights” tour with a maximum of six people. Our guide was so sweet and knowledgeable. He showed us a great mix of the heavy hitters (the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory, the Venus de Milo, and others) and less popular but still impressive paintings and sculptures. Then Carla wanted to explore more of the Egyptian wing, which we’d glimpsed at the beginning of the tour, and we found a few other things my husband and I were interested in seeing, and then we were done. We got to skip the long lines to get into the museum, we got to see a nice mix of artwork, and we didn’t get overwhelmed or lost. I would totally do a guided tour again.

Strasbourg. One of our day trips was to Strasbourg, and oh, what a charming city! We had uncharacteristically sunny warm weather, and had a wonderful time seeing the cathedral and exploring the city via a Rick Steves guided walk. We stopped for an outdoor lunch alongside a canal where I had the most delicious spaetzle with mushrooms paired with a crisp and summery local Riesling. 

The Eiffel Tower. My husband and I were happy to take Carla to the Eiffel Tower, because it was her top priority for the trip. But he and I wouldn’t have gone without her. I wasn’t exactly dreading it, but I wasn’t looking forward to it either. (By the way, if you want to skip the big line without paying ridiculously overpriced fees for a “skip the line guide,” you have to get tickets exactly 60 days in advance, at midnight Paris time. I am very grateful to my husband for figuring this out and staying up to get the tickets!) Carla wanted to go all the way to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and I’m not a huge fan of heights, and I already did the Eiffel Tower a million years ago with my high school French class. But oh was it ever worth it! I should have known by now that an experience completely transforms when I see it through Carla’s eyes. She was excited and quite nervous about the height and yet so determined to make it work. We had perfect weather, we had glorious views, and Carla loved it. The Eiffel Tower wowed again when we saw it from the top of the Arc de Triomphe at night. At dusk, the whole tower lights up, but then it also sparkles every hour on the hour for about five minutes. My husband took a video of the instant the sparkle started and he caught Carla’s face when she saw it and it was priceless. One of those moments I think I will remember forever. I hope she remembers it too.

Art!: I have had the immense privilege of visiting the Louvre, the Musee d’Orsay, the Pompidou Centre, and many other art museums in Paris and around the world. This trip, we went to the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay and I kind of expected the experience to feel a little “same old, same old.” But it wasn’t. I found the museums so moving. Some of the art we saw was three thousand years old! Can you imagine? That people so separate from us in time and manner and lifestyle felt the same drive to create? That other people saw these creations and deemed them valuable enough to save, over millennia? That still other people erected buildings for the sole purpose of housing these works? That millions of people flock to monuments to art to see these ancient and modern creations to this day? It feels so precious and human, this desire to create, to translate experience and emotion into marble or paint so that someone else might know it too. 

Our Hotel. We picked our hotel purely because it had a separate but connected room for Carla. The rooms were massive for Paris, giving us plenty of privacy. We each had a mini fridge that the staff refilled with complementary waters and sodas and juice each day. The beds were comfy, the rooms were pretty quiet. The showers had very decent water pressure, and very minimal temperature issues. The staff were friendly and helpful and the hotel and surrounding neighborhood felt safe. We were within easy walking distance of several Metro stops. The main floor of the hotel doubled as a breakfast restaurant, and we were able to use the tables and microwave in the restaurant space on the evenings we didn’t make it out to dinner. It wasn’t fancy and it wasn’t right in the middle of all the Paris action, but it was comfortable and spacious and suited our needs perfectly.

Paris Fashion. While I was arrayed in stereotypical American Middle Aged Mom Wear, I got to admire all the extremely fashionable Parisiennes strolling around the city. The in-style, insofar as I can tell, is something along the lines of wide-legged jeans paired with an ankle-skimming black trench coat. The coats have belts, but are rarely worn belted. I did not see a specific single type of footwear – there was everything from heels to boots to sneakers. I do think the sneakers were mainly white; I didn’t see a lot of bright colors. Hairstyles, as in the US, seem to veer toward the long and lightly wavy. Everyone was impossibly chic, which I suppose is de rigueur for Paris. I would have gladly sat at an outdoor café all day long, watching all the beautiful people live their lives. 

Rick Steves. I would be remiss not to give a shoutout to good ol’ Ricky, who provided many restaurant recommendations, pinpointed bathroom opportunities, suggested multiple points of interest, and created interesting, detailed walks for us to follow.

Womp Womps

Bruxelles. None of us had ever been to Belgium before, and Brussels is within my range of acceptability for day trips (two hours), so we decided to go. I had no preconceptions, and I’m kind of glad because I fear it would have been a disappointment. On the pros side, our train trip was easy, we had good weather, and the city is beautiful. On the cons side, I have never been to a busier, more crowded place in all my life. There is an adorable main square in the old town and it was crammed with people. CRAMMED. Everywhere was jammed with tourists. Even though our surroundings were lovely, I felt overstimulated and panicky and overwhelmed. I felt like I couldn’t let go of Carla for an instant, or she would be swept away by a tide of tourists. Even when we left the old town to explore some of the area up-hill, there were still crowds and crowds of people. The touristy sites weren’t particularly noteworthy, either. I mean, the Grand Place was impressive, but the Manneken Pis was tiny and dressed in a firefighter costume, the Royal Quarter was under construction, Jeanneke Pis was tucked into the end of a narrow alley full of drunk college students, the Atomium was too far away for us to visit during our quick visit, and the local food was both stressful and disappointing. I’m glad I’ve been there, but I can’t say I enjoyed it very much at all. The best part was probably the random cat we met, hanging out and accepting pets outside a restaurant. I know it was a highlight for Carla. Not just of Brussels, but of the entire trip.

My Skin. The combination of traveling, eating a bunch of restaurant meals, and spending all day walking and sweating was not kind to my face. I had horrible breakouts pretty much every day. 

eSIM. My husband and I decided that it made the most sense for him to pay the daily rate ($12, I think?) to maintain his regular phone service while we were in Europe. He had to be available in case of urgent work issues, plus he had all the details of the trip on his phone and he is hands down the better photographer. But we also decided that I would get an eSIM while we were away. It’s hard to remember why, now, because it turned out to be so useless. I think partly because we wanted to have a French phone number for Carla to keep on her person in case she got separated from us. In any event, it sucked. I had horrible service almost the entire time. It kept cutting in and out and even when it worked, websites took forever to load, if they ever did. We did use it twice, to make dinner reservations. (I called a French restaurant and made the reservation myself, in French!) But other than that, it was a waste of money. 

WiFi. Our hotel supposedly had WiFi, but it was both patchy and horrible. By this I mean that it was nearly inoperable the entire time I was there – I could not connect to the internet pretty much at all. On the rare occasion when my phone would show a few bars of connectivity, and I would connect to a blog or my email or a news story, it would quickly cut out. Some i-messages worked, but not all; WhatsApp worked occasionally. I could not send photos via text. Between the eSIM and the WiFi, I was usually able to jot out a quick email to my parents about our day, but that was all. I lost my Wordle streak. Oh well. I didn’t really miss my phone, except I would have liked to keep up with everyone’s blogs better. I still feel very behind!

When I weigh the highs against the lows, the highs win by a landslide. It was a wonderful vacation and I feel so grateful that we were able to make it happen, and that everything went so smoothly. (Once again, a major shout out to my husband for ensuring that our experience was so effortless and fun!) 

You may notice that I haven’t talked much about the food. Don’t worry (or, perhaps, do?): I am planning a whole post about the food wins and losses of the trip.