Paris was perfectly marvelous

Sometimes traveling is about way more than seeing a place. It can be about relationships, with ourselves, with others, and with those same places we went to see. Tourism is interesting, but true traveling, being immersed in a place, it’s history, and it’s own particular personality, is addicting.

The best gift ever this year, was the opportunity to spend ten days conquering Europe, with my favorite (only) daughter. It was a big occasion for her, as she turned 21 as we were somewhere over the Atlantic, on the way to Paris. Now, the irony was not lost on me that we were spending her 21st birthday in a country where you can legally drink at sixteen. She wasn’t carded even once while we were traveling, only once we slid into the airport bar during a layover in Detroit, did she get the opportunity to hand over her license and be given a cocktail in return.

Now, I think I may have worn her out, as my pace is quick and determined. I’ll sleep when I’m dead, thank you. Right now though, I have things to see, eat, drink, and do! If you travel with me, you can either sleep when you’re dead, or get left behind! My favorite things turned out to be offbeat and interesting…an amazing circus museum that is only open 10 days a year, a private dinner for 12 at the home of the winner of France’s Master Chef, finding the remains of ancient and medieval Paris, and hopping a train to Amsterdam, completely on a whim. So much planning was involved, and it gave us a framework to be spontaneous, like marveling at an immersive Van Gogh experience we stumbled on in Brussels. We sang American songs in a fancy restaurant New Year’s Eve, along with the wonderful musical duo that was performing, blended with the crowd on the steps at Sacre-Coeur to countdown to the shouting of Bon Annee’ at the chiming of the New Year, as the bells began to peal, and partied down, in the early hours of the morning, at a dance club. Then we browsed the Christmas market in Brussels, hopped another train and glided along the canals of Amsterdam, before exploring the infamous red light district, and finally boarded the A350 that brought us home. It is all a somewhat delicious blur, that I will never forget.