Bonjour Paris!

This past weekend we hopped on a train to Paris. Three-and-a-half hours of reading, video games and drafting essays for San Francisco high school applications later, we arrived at the Gare de Lyon in Paris.

Paris feels busy and urban and maybe even a little gritty. A contrast we never felt coming from San Francisco and New York. But Paris is so beautiful; we came away with a million pictures of street corners, doorways, windows and rooftops that in any other city would be mundane but the Parisians have made so pretty.

We make our way to The Hotel Scribe at the opera subway stop.

It is a sunny, 65 degree fall day in Paris. We meet up with my college roommate Elizabeth, her husband Omri and their two daughters, walk through the Tuileries and the Place de la Concord and across the Seine.

After a cafe stop for coffee, milkshakes and charcuterie, we part ways. I drink wine with Elizabeth while Matt begins Part One of what the boys might describe as a 3-day death march through the entirety of Paris.

Elizabeth is one of the world’s best people. I’m grateful for the time with her and the opportunity to catch up after these past few years.

The boys walked through the Latin Quarter, to Notre Dame, the Louvre, in the Marais, by the Pompidou and back up to the hotel. There may have been some whining but I was not there.

All the pain was forgotten at our delicious dinner at the French bistro Aux Crus de Bourgogne. With a Nuit-St-Georges wine, pate, œufs en Meurette, steak frites, châteaubriand, tagliatelle aux Girolles, coq au vin and a soufflé everything on Earth was forgotten.

The next morning we visit the Musee d’Orsay. Built out of an old train station with an awesome clock, the main hall of the old train station is filled with sculpture. The Museum’s permanent collection focuses on impressionists and post-impressionists. Jacob took 5 million pictures. I will try to be more selective, though it is tough.

After the Musee, we split up again. I have a leisurely lunch with Elizabeth at a little Italian place called Casa Bini and the boys eat a giant bowl of chocolate mousse and begin Death March Day 2.

Sunday night we have dinner with Elizabeth, Omri and their daughters at their apartment in the Latin Quarter. We explain who Michael Jordan and Drake are because they are so French that they do not know and they feed us artichokes, a roast and an apple crisp. Xander and Matt walk home and Jacob and I ride the subway. We have a bizarre experience with a French subway harasser. He made kissing noises at us while belching and yelling things in French (and some English). I’m inured to subway harassment after years of just being a woman but Jacob was upset. Who harasses a woman with her child? We all get home safely.

On our last morning, I’ve promised my teenager that I will take him shopping in Paris. Matt happily begins Death March Day 3 with Jacob up to Sacré Cœur past Moulin Rouge. Matt is in his happy place getting 20,000 steps a day. Jacob is in search of Paris’s best pain au chocolat.

We get on the train and head home. And it is so nice to get home. We remark to each other (again) how Switzerland truly feels like home.