Parents in Paris!

Remember that time I got my parents to fly all the way across the ocean to see me get married and visit Paris? I know that was 3 weeks ago and it seems like I forgot but I swear I didn’t.

It was a crazy, full, busy week but it was so much fun!

Let me set the scene: my mother, a big European traveler in her day and, honestly, the reason my brain has been full of travel dreams since I was about 10 years old, hadn’t been to France in over 40 years. My father, on the other hand, had a brand-spanking new passport in hand, having never flown so far before in his life. Things were about to get very exciting.

I’m still here, I swear.

I’ve been slacking.

I was supposed to write about Christmas in Paris, but Christmas came and went and I didn’t get around to it. Then I thought, hey fine – I’ll write about Christmas and New Year’s Eve together, that’ll be great. Then New Year’s came and went and I didn’t get around to it.

I’d like to say that I’ve just been so busy with my fabulous life and that I was just “living it to the fullest” so much and that’s why. But that’s not exactly true.

True fact: I have been busy. True fact: it is not with fabulous life-living. It’s with paperwork and planning and flights home and trying to find enough sweaters to not freeze to death in this arctic New England weather we’re so nicely experiencing just as soon as I got back here.

So here’s your quick recap of the past couple of weeks, in photo/summary format.

Back to life

This weekend, we went back to life as we know it here in Paris.

Sure, it’s been over a week now since the attacks at the Bataclan, restaurant terraces, and Stade de France, and they’ve caught, arrested, and identified many people involved in those terrible events. But few people are sitting at cafes and restaurants like usual, and even the plaza underneath the Eiffel Tower is basically empty when it’s usually so packed you can hardly take two steps before having to dodge another tourist, another picture-taker. Even the sketchy men hawking trinkets and keychains seem a bit sad with no one to harass for a euro.

A Weekend in Paris

The very best thing about this weekend is that it was not the first and nor will it be the last I ever have in Paris. No pressure, no rush, no plan. Just a normal weekend at home and a walk around the city.

Having been to Paris twice before, I’ve done many of the big MUST DOs. Eiffel Tower, Musée du Louvre, Notre Dame… I’ve seen and been inside them all, and felt the crush of tourists. Wandering around this weekend, we got to walk without any agenda and without feeling like we were wasting time or missing anything important. I live here – what’s the rush?