What I Love about Paris

• The Eiffel Tower.

• People walking with baguettes in their hands or sticking out of their bags.  I even saw one man in full serious running gear running with a baguette in each hand.  Ha.

• Children chattering in French.

• Street signs on the old buildings - you know just where to look to get your bearings.

• The Eiffel Tower.

• The Metro, the RER (train) and the bus system.  You can get anywhere.  I am directionally challenged in a big way, but I simply needed a Metro map and all was well.

• White dishes.  Simple plain white dishes to highlight the carefully arranged food.

• Pitchers of warm milk to add to your coffee.  (little white pitchers, mais oui!)

• The Eiffel Tower.

• Croissants.

• Markets everywhere.  Fresh produce, fresh meats, fresh cheeses, fresh flowers.  FRESH.

• Fountains, statues and wrought iron gates.  Ooooh...I love all that wrought iron.  

• Parks and green spaces.

• The Eiffel Tower.

• Dogs.  So many petite pooches on leashes.

• Cobblestone streets.

• Tiny sidewalk stores - you pop in, grab a baguette or a newspaper and pop back out. 

• The Eiffel Tower.

• Walking everywhere.

• Friendly people IF you talk to them.  They don’t engage first, but if I asked a question everyone bent over backwards to help.

• French.  The challenge and fun of engaging in the simplest conversations.  Inflections, hand gestures, smiles, and laughing eyes - I so enjoyed using my French, and even in a week it improved ten fold.

• Menus on chalkboards.

• Un carafe d’eau. (glass pitcher of tap water served with wine glasses).  It added elegance to our meals.

• The Eiffel Tower.  There was a grandeur to seeing the Eiffel Tower each day.  It is so immense, and so strikingly different than the stone buildings and monuments.  It is magical at night.  And there is something very comforting in knowing that if you can just get to the Eiffel Tower you can find your apartment.  We’d be in a different section of town and suddenly there it was, peeking over a building.  Home base.  I can’t imagine not staying in the 7th arrondissement if and when we return.