Wonder and Wander

We knew from the get go that although lots of people we loved would want to come see us, not very many would actually be able to pull it off. We felt so spoiled to get to meet Ellen and David in Rome, and I was thrilled when my friend Victoria said that she could make the trip with her daughter. It had been a long time since we had been with people from home.

Victoria and her daughter Madelyn have been in CC with us for 6 years now, and Claire is fast friends with Maddie. We had visited DC with them 3 years before, but we were definitely raising the bar with this international trip!

We decided to make a girls trip out of the first part of their visit, so Claire and Eve and I got on a train to Paris at the end of June. Our family has been constantly together this whole trip, so it felt surprisingly weird to suddenly be split up. Obviously, I have done a lot of travel details, but it felt a little more nerve wracking to be on my own. We successfully handled all the navigation and housing issues, and we were ready for a girls’ getaway in Paris. Oh la la! (They really do say that so much here!)

We explored our neighborhood (Marais), and walked down to Place Des Vosges, where Victor Hugo lived and wrote. We obviously had to get something delicious to eat… we stopped at Pain de Sucre and got a couple of lovely confections. We wandered down Rue des Rosiers, which is the heart of the old Jewish quarter. You can get some pretty awesome felafel sandwiches at the L’As de Fallafel. Which we did, and relished every bite. We finished our evening with macarons by the Seine, walked back to our apartment, and braided each other’s hair. Isn’t that what one does on a girls’ overnight??

The next day, we had a sweet reunion with our friends (at a boulangerie, how fitting), and we immediately hit the ground running.

We grabbed groceries and sat by the Seine in the dappling sun with our pique-nique, as one does. Everything tastes better there. Saint-Chappelle, the flower market, the Île de la Cité, walking by the Louvre and the bouquiniste stalls. Victoria likes to walk about as much as I do, so we went on foot through the Tuileries, past the Place de la Concorde (where the guillotines were set up during the Revolution), and up the Champs Elysées. It is quite a way, so we bribed our whiny girls with the promise of Laudrée macarons. There are two major macarons monarchs in Paris, and we are a house divided on the subject. However, Laudrée wins hands-down on decor. We ate in a room that felt like a mermaid’s underwater grotto, and even the bathrooms were lovely.

For dinner, we went for the classic bistro experience, which we hadn’t yet had. The place I reserved was tiny and out of the way, a little stuffy in the heat, but with red checked tablecloths and a very traditional aesthetic. Eve surprised me by insisting that she wanted to try escargot (previously she had been very vocal on the contrary position). When Madelyn also went in with her fork, Claire found herself peer-pressured into trying one. To my surprise, they all liked the snails. Who doesn’t like roasty meat that is drenched in garlic butter? Nonetheless, I was proud of our girls.

We walked to the Eiffel Tower by sunset, and Eve tried to take the perfect photo. Her instant camera is a little challenging at times, and the twilight made it impossible to take a good photo. There were tears, but she rallied as the lights came on the tower and the magic set in.

By the time we got back to the apartment, it was about midnight and we had clocked 12 miles. We were all exhausted–I hadn’t been sleeping, and Victoria and Madelyn had just been on a transatlantic flight–but we were just getting started.

We spent the next day at Versailles, and we spent the whole day there. It was crowded, as you expect at the major tourist attractions in July, but the rooms were still stunning, and the attention to detail on the ceilings and walls is really lovely. I had never truly explored the gardens before, but we did them justice, I think. We had another picnic (and this time I brought enough bread–is there ever a day in a France where you don’t walk around with baguette sticking out of your bag? Not for me, anyway.) We got some restorative coffee, and wandered through the gardens.

My girls have been longing to ride bikes, but they are too young to use the public rentals in Bordeaux. We let them rent bikes in the gardens (the scale of the grounds is enormous). Eve was so confident in her ability that she fooled both of us. She was halfway down a long allée before I realized she was likely to take a spill and I wouldn’t be close by. She did fall, but she was still glad to take the ride.

Behind Versailles and the gardens sit two more palaces, and they were quiet and serene compared to the heavy traffic at the main building. I loved the Second Empire furnishings in Grand Trianon. It sounds ridiculous to have a palace away from a palace, but after all the ostentation of Versailles, Grand Trianon seemed much more livable.

Petit Trianon was Marie Antoinette’s getaway from the getaway, and it can’t miss like a nice country home in comparison to the others. But the real wonder was MA’s own personal English hamlet in her backyard. I had read about her fascination of playing dress up as an English milkmaid, but I had assumed that just meant a tidy place for her to milk a gentle cow in a fabricated peasant dress. But no. She had her own Disney-like theme park of an English village built as her personal play place, complete with a pond and boats and gardens and vineyards and goats and chickens. The works. (In her defense, she never really had much of a chance to grow up, I guess) It was unreal.

We got somewhat lost trying to get back to the main Versailles grounds, which tells you something about just how vast the place is. I have no idea how they clear the place out at the end of the day. By the time we stumbled out of the forest, we were tired and hungry, with a lot of walking left to do. We grabbed pizza on the way to the train station, but got there only to realize that the train was out of order that evening, so we hiked to the other station with the other stranded travelers. We were a motley mix of Spaniards, Americans, and Tibetan monks. It was another 12+ mile day, but we saw Versailles in a way that I think most people don’t get to, and it was unforgettable.

Victoria and Madelyn had never been to Paris, so we were trying to hit all the highlights in a short period of time. We spent the next morning at the Louvre. Although we went to many of the same exhibits that we had visited the month before, we saw so many new things. The size of the collection is simply staggering. We let the girls sit and sketch, which always feels like a restorative thing.

As exciting as Paris is, I was ready to get back to the quieter beauty of Bordeaux and my boys. Our unlucky train streak, however, derailed is again (ha!). We pulled off into an empty train station about halfway home, unloaded, and then waited a few hours for a new train. We lost Claire’s Kindle in the melée, which was an epic emergency, since reading is our travel lifeline. It was also amazing to see how patient and polite the French travelers were, even in the heat and delay. Manners are a wonderful thing. Americans should try it sometime.

We finally made it home late in the evening, welcomed by a stuffy and humid heatwave. No matter– Vance and Isaac were there, and we were together again.