In May, Kristian’s sister and her family came for a visit. They were the first folks to schedule a trip to come and see us (best trendsetters ever!) and my brother-in-law went all out with the planning.
Kristian took the train up to Paris to help them get settled in their first day, and Lilian and I joined them for dinner. Paris is sprawling, and the public transit there isn’t always the easiest to navigate. I always suggest staying as close to the things you want to do and see as possible. With a group of seven, that wasn’t exactly easy, but Jack managed to find us a decent Airbnb.
Our Airbnb hosts chopped an apartment into as many bedrooms as possible, which resulted in some… interesting choices. There was only one shower, and the kitchen was basically a glorified closet with a mini fridge and sink in it. You had to walk through bedrooms to get to other bedrooms. But, hey, we were there for Paris, not the apartment! And we all get along well enough that we navigated the shower situation no-problem.
(Get you some in-laws who you can share a shower with and not fight over hot water).
That first night, we made our way over to the Eiffel Tower. I’m officially “back in my day” years old, because back in my day you could walk right up to the Eiffel Tower. I was in Paris during the summer of 1998, when France was hosting the World Cup. Watching the hordes of football fans hanging out under the tower, waving their national flags and singing songs is a core memory. Now, you have to pass through a security screening just to stand near the tower.
(Now get off my lawn!)
Jack made sure that we had all of our tickets well in advance of our trip. Which is a good thing, because I learned the hard way later this year that the tickets sell out quickly. We had summit tickets, which was a first for me. Previously, I’d only ever been to the second floor. I’m a lot better about heights than I used to be, but it’s still kinda scary to take that elevator all the way up. The elevator itself is pretty cool… very steampunk vibes, but with a modern touchscreen for the operator.
I wish I’d taken a photo, but they have a little display up there of the room where Gustave Eiffel used to throw parties. He had a gramophone and would serve cocktails. No wonder he didn’t want them to tear his tower down after the World Exposition!
It’s been one of Lilian’s dreams for years (even before we ever thought of moving to France) to “visit the Eiffel Tower in Paris and eat macarons.”
Me: You know we can macarons in the US, right?
Lilian: Yeah, but I want the good ones.
(Obviously, this was before I started baking them at home).
They sell macarons up at the summit, but they’re 25 euros for a tiny little box! We decided that it would be more fun to split her #TravelGoals into a multi-parter.
In 2007, Kristian and I took an impromptu trip to London and Paris. For that trip, we flew in and out of London and stayed with relatives there. We were pretty broke, so we tried to do things as cheaply as possible. I was young enough to get a youth discount on the train fare.
It was before you could book hotels online, so we took the Chunnel to Paris and called hotels from a payphone at the train station. We got lucky and the first place I called had an opening. It turns out we were extra lucky, because we’d somehow managed to miss the fact that it was Paris Fashion Week. Just about everything was booked up, but we landed a room that nobody wanted. It was nice enough, but it was located smack dab in the middle of the hotel. As in, it didn’t have a single window that faced the great outdoors.
I mostly remember that trip in snippets, but I imagine that I slept well in that complete darkness.
I still have some photos from our time in Paris, and Lilian and I collaborated on a few recreations. A couple of my favorites were from the Eiffel Tower. I mean, look at what absolute babies we were!
We got the whole family involved in trying to figure out where we’d been standing for the photos. We took a few with me standing in my own footsteps, as well as some with Lilian standing in for me. Having a blog that’s almost old enough to drink in the US (my first post is from January of 2006!) is great, because you can search your archives and figure out what year you went to London and Paris (I thought it was in 2009, but it was actually in 2007). It’s also embarrassing, though, because sometimes you discover that you posted several times about working on this great write-up about your trip… and then the write-up is not in your archives.
There are currently 25 posts sitting in my drafts (one of them is titled “Technical Difficulties” and has no other text). The oldest one is from 2008. Not one of them is about our trip. Was I writing this post in notepad? (my first mention of it says that I was working on it during the flight back home, but that my laptop battery died). Was I just gaslighting my audience before gaslighting was cool? I guess we’ll never know, because I didn’t post anything about it.
Anyways, visiting the Eiffel Tower with family was great. I loved how excited Lilian was to finally get there. And there’s something special about doing something super touristy with a big family group. It just feels… wholesome? Everyone is taking a million pictures of each other and just generally joking and laughing.
Lilian was pretty much toast by the end of the day, so she and I took the bus home (everyone else walked). I was glad to have some extra time with her, even if much of it was spent reminding her to not be so damn grumpy.
If I’ve learned anything from finding a trove of old photos that I’d forgotten about, it’s that I should never feel guilty about taking too many photos. I mean, look at these little bébés!
