We covered so much ground during our time in Paris. So many side adventures, entertaining details, anecdotes, and thoughts. But not everything needed its own big story, so here’s a list of several smaller ones:
The Smell(s) of Paris
Every major city has a smell, and 1) I am keenly obsessed with this fact and 2) I don’t know why nobody talks about this. If you've been to Barcelona, Taipei, San Francisco, Siena, etc., you know—they all have their own unique odor.
Of course, being cities, they have many many many individual odors, but they all have one single distinct smell that will instantly transport you back. For example, any time I catch a whiff of old stone, I recall Siena, that medieval Tuscan city refusing to move too far forward in time. Any time I encounter that telltale combination of garbage, human excrement, and sewer soup, I think of San Francisco. (If you’ve been there, don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.) And so on.
Thus, I was eager to learn what Paris smelled like. For the first day or two, I couldn’t find it. Or at least, I couldn’t place it. Then my friend Ben put it bluntly: “It’s tobacco and perfume,” he said. “And bread.”
He was right. In particular, cigarette smoke and perfume and bread. And also a hint of that swampy street odor you find in every stony city.
Once I caught on, it was everywhere. Smoke and perfume. Harsh and delicate. Bread and stone. Fresh and soft, old and hard. Like some kinda poetry.
Dang, Dior
Our 12-year-old, Essie, is a budding fashionista. So one of the fun “hey-maybe-this-will-be-cool” items we put on the agenda was a visit to the Dior museum. Spoiler: It was pretty great.
It’s not a large place, but they’ve made superb use of the space. There’s a multi-story spiral staircase in the entry area lined with color-coded miniature gowns, shoes, and accessories. You just want to kind of hang out there and stare.
It’s multiple floors of Dior and his pupils. A bit about his history, but mostly the dresses. Dresses everywhere, by the various designers of the House of Dior. The exhibits feel more like glorious window displays in a divine boutique store that never was.
I confess that most of this artistry is lost on me. But I’m not made of stone, either; the dresses are mostly absolutely stunning, alternately in their simplicity and their extravagance. You could suss out the language of the various designers. Slowly see the evolution of the designs over time. Fascinating. Breathtaking at times.
For as snooty as this museum is, they wisely have these little scavenger hunt books for young visitors. The kids grabbed them and pursued the mission inside the books in earnest—too earnestly, really, as they got kind of stressed about finding things. But find things they did, and it kept them moving forward as long as we needed them to.
The Bike Tour
I don’t have a whole lot to say about the bike tour we went on other than: It was a delight and a highlight. Fun, not too strenuous, with a nice group of about a dozen folks who were patient and kind with our kids (they all wisely did NOT choose to do Paris with their own children in tow), and a charming young tour guide named Arnaud.
It felt surprisingly amazing to be on a bicycle. We’d traveled so far on foot and by plane, train, and automobile, I’d forgotten how it felt. If you let your brain unfocus for a second, you can also dive into the romance of the fact that you’re biking through Paris, zipping through intriguing neighborhoods, and dodging people and traffic, like you’re the main character in a charming opening scene of an otherwise dull romcom.
We were worried that the kids wouldn’t be able to hang. Frankly, they’ve become indoor kids, so they don’t spend tons of time on bikes at home. Also, Camille is 8…could she handle the traffic, etc.?
It was a tiny bit bumpy in that regard, but honestly totally fine. And they didn’t have trouble keeping up, even though it was four hours long.
In the middle of the tour, Arnaud brought us to a little circular square where we parked the bikes and had lunch. We scattered to the four winds, the lot of us. Our family got hearty crepes from a takeaway place.
Except for Es, who tearfully wanted pizza, which Leen managed to find for her. It was a perfect spot to park. And we had just enough time to soak it in.
All told, here is a list of all the places we toured:
Fontaine St. Michel
Shakespeare & Co book shop (there’s a movie still of Owen Wilson standing in front of it)
Café Le Procope (the famous one that all the artists and poets and philosophers liked)
Saint-Sulpice Church (“sulpice,” as in, solstice)
Ancient city wall (built as part of the original Louvre fort)
Place des Voges (one of the oldest squares in the city, home to rich people)
Wall of the Righteous (remembrance of the Holocaust in the Jewish quarter)
Panthéon (building in which lots of important French people are buried)
Roman arena (yeah, an actual ancient Roman arena)
…let me say one quick thing about that last one. It’s Arnaud’s favorite spot on the tour. Even though he grew up in Paris, in and around this route, he never knew it was there until he started doing tours.
It’s an actual Roman arena, built by the Romans when they were planning to expand their empire this direction, and this area was the outskirts of Paris. It used to seat something like 15,000 spectators. Then the city started basically dumping garbage here, and it dropped out of collective memory.
Centuries later, they found a lot of the old stones—and yoinked them for other building projects. Which means there are old buildings around Paris built using stones that were hewn centuries earlier.
At some point, they kind of excavated the area, but used it for parking buses or something. Eventually, someone figured out that this used to be a Roman arena, and it was converted into a super cool park.
You can still see the cages where they housed the vicious animals, as well as the big drain they would plug up when they flooded the place for small maritime battles.
Gratitude on the Seine
Another one of the highlights from this trip was a dusky cruise on the Seine. It was organized by Leen’s conference people, so a large group of scholars (and their families, wooo!) gathered for it. Something like 70, 80 people.
It was as glorious as I’d hoped. I LOVE being on the water, and seeing Paris by boat was perfect. The kids loved it. We all crept up to the front of the boat almost immediately. We all took pictures—of each other, of the scenery, of the people loafing by the water’s edge.
It was a great moment to let the gratitude seep in.
Paris is just…stupid beautiful. Every gorgeous garden gives way to a spectacular building gives way to life-on-the-Seine gives way to proud sculpture gives way to up-the-minute style and decor. We’ve done a fair bit of traveling at this point, and we still can’t believe how lucky we are to do it. To be anywhere, let alone a place like this.
Even better was that, because of this conference, so many of our people—you know, “Your People” kind of people—were there, too. On this boat with us.
After, we gathered for dinner at a long table somewhere near Pont Neuf with those precious people, drinking wine, eating adventurous French cuisine, and laughing and telling stories past midnight, while the kids began nodding off but still didn’t want to leave this place or these people. Neither did I.
This piece is the final entry of a series of pieces around our recent trip to Paris. You can catch up to how we got here by reading these: