The Thankful Project: November 10th

The Thankful Project: November 10th: Memory

Memories are so sweet. They bring you back to a moment, a special time that you don't want to forget. I'm thankful for a memory that I know I'll remember the rest of my life: my birthday in Paris.

The morning of my birthday my mom and my cousin Kelly woke up early and went to La Cuisine Paris for a French breakfast pastry class. As a baker, this was my dream come true. Learning to make pain au chocolat and croissants by scratch by a French pastry chef was just amazing.

Then we spent the day wandering around Paris, eating, shopping and sitting in my favorite garden, Jardin des Tuileries with a bottle of rose. As evening fell, we packed up our bags and headed to the Eiffel Tower and I got my birthday wish: a picnic, a glass of champagne and a macaroon under the Eiffel Tower. It was a magical day to remember.

Jour 9 à Paris: A Parisian Birthday

Your birthday only comes around once a year, so you might as well enjoy it. Well this year I can whole heartedly say that I enjoyed every moment of my birthday. Waking up in Paris is a wonderful feeling. Waking up in Paris on your golden birthday is a whole other wonderful feeling. It was another bright and beautiful morning but being a Sunday it was quiet. Kids weren’t running around outside playing and people weren’t rushing off to work; it was slower, quieter and quaint. 

The cafés open later on Sunday so we ate a quick bite in our apartment before heading out to my birthday treat: a French baking class! La Cuisine Paris, a French baking school, offers cooking and baking classes in a multiple of different ‘themes’. We chose to do a morning baking class where you learn to bake some of the most iconic breakfast pastries: croissants, pain au chocolat, pinwheels with jam, cinnamon twists, and raisin bread. 

Emilie was our instructor and led the small group of us in making the perfect pastry dough to make fluffy French pastries. What I found out: it’s all in using rich high-fat content butter and fresh unprocessed flour. We sifted, rolled, folded and patted the dough until it was perfect. We set that dough aside and she brought out pre-made dough as it has to sit for hours before use. Then she started instructing us on the fun techniques to make all the different pastries.

In the end we had wonderful, warm, rich and gooey pastries that we got to enjoy with our tea and coffee plus we got to take the extras home!

 The class was lots of fun, Emilie was a wonderful instructor and I have to say I was highly impressed by our baking skills in the end. I wish that I could eat like that every morning and a) not get sick and b) not gain 50 pounds in a year! Wouldn’t that be a great birthday wish?!

After packing up our extra goodies we left the school and spent the afternoon in Paris! Sunday is definitely a quiet day and some of the shops are closed but I found it enjoyable and fun to just walk around the city (and buy myself a few birthday gifts too). 


Mom asked what else I wanted to do on my birthday and I honestly just loved the Jardin Tulleries so much, I just wanted to go back there and enjoy one more bottle of rosé before having to leave tomorrow. Sunday at any park in Paris is amazing because it is the epitome of rest and relaxation. There was live music, tons of families having time together, people reading, couples laughing and talking…it was just so different than what my typical Sunday looks like back in the States that it was so relaxing and wonderful- plus the rosé was amazing as usual!

Following our afternoon shopping and sitting in the park we returned to our apartment to get organized and pack up our belongings. After getting things together we packed our picnic bags, grabbed a few blankets from the couch, a wine opened and our coats and headed out towards the Eiffel Tower. I wanted to have a picnic under the Eiffel Tower and watch the lights come up and sparkle and that is exactly what we did. Kelly bought a bottle of champagne this week to toast my birthday and we enjoyed our picnic on the grass.

 As it got later and darker it was just a matter of time before the Eiffel Tower came to life and sparkled for the first time tonight and not too long after sunset, she came to life and sparkled. It was an amazing sight and it was the most perfect way to end the most perfect trip of the most perfect birthday a girl could ask for.

All I wanted for my birthday this year was to sit under the Eiffel Tower with a macaroon and a glass of champagne, and my wish came true tonight. This has been the most wonderful week ever. It makes me incredibly sad that tomorrow morning we will have to pack up and leave this wonderful apartment and this beautiful city but as Dr. Seuss once said, don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. So I reflect on this trip with smiles and memories that will laugh me a lifetime, especially because I got to take them with family. I’ve loved every moment and will dream of Paris from now until the day we get to meet again.

Jour 8 à Paris: An Afternoon in Paris

After a few days of having to hit the road early and be traveling outside of Paris, today we decided we just wanted to stay in Paris and bum around and do a few things we haven’t had an opportunity yet to do. So today we woke up at a more leisurely time, got ready and walked to Café de Flor for a wonderful breakfast. I love how the French eat straight bread and carbs for breakfast yet they don’t really seem to mind. Secondly- I’m allergic to gluten but the bread here in France has been so wonderful and fresh and pure that I have actually been doing wonderful: praise the Lord!

Our breakfast at Café de Flor was the best breakfast we’ve had, hands down. Mom and Kelly ordered café crémes and I ordered a chocolat chaud,  all of which were rich and delicious. Then we had to get the fresh squeezed orange juice and it was just that- freshly squeezed. Yum! To ‘start’ our breakfast we all split pain au chocolat et croissants which were light, fluffy and perfect. Then for the main meal we felt like we needed some substance besides straight carbs so we split two pieces of quiche; my mom makes wonderful quiche but this was by far the best quiche I’ve ever had in my life (sorry mom!). Another reason that breakfast was just perfect was the pure ambiance of the place. It’s obviously an iconic café but we were able to snag an outdoor bistro table and watch people go by on the streets. Although I could’ve gladly sat there and gorged myself on croissants and hot chocolate all day, we wanted to move on and get some real shopping time.

Shockingly enough we’ve been so busy sightseeing and eating that we haven’t spent any time shopping; and coming to Paris, the fashion capitol of the world, and not shopping surely must be a crime. We spent the afternoon walking and shopping. We went to this large market called Le Grand Marche and picked up some food for our picnic tomorrow night (we decided that on our final night in Paris which also happens to be my birthday, we would have a picnic under the Eiffel Tower). We bought meats, chesses (not super stinky ones this time because last time we bought super smelly cheese and my whole bag smelled horrendous), biscuits and some fruit before going to a smaller Ladurée to get a small box of macaroons for my birthday!

The rest of the afternoon we just stopped into whatever shops we wanted on our way to le Jardin Luxemburg since we hadn’t been to that garden yet. It was another wonderful park with lots of outdoor cafés, people sitting on park benches and chairs and families out for the sunny afternoon. We spent some time here sipping on a few glasses of rosé and enjoying the scenery before realizing that we had forgotten to buy baguette for our picnic tomorrow! At this point it was late in the day and all the boulangeries were closing! Talk about the horror. A Parisian picnic without baguette- there is no such thing! Luckily my fluency in French food came in handy and a shop keeper was able to point out a bakery that was still open and wouldn’t you know it, the bakery had just made their last batch of bread for the day! (We purchased two baugettes for safe measure…and the disaster was avoided).

We took a long way home and ran into a street market which was super cool, full of foods, herbs, spices, soaps and handmade gifts. I think that is some of the fun of traveling- having unplanned, random and spontaneous adventures that allow you to see a whole different part of a culture that otherwise you would never see.

I can’t believe it’s been over a week since we arrived. I don’t think I’ll ever have enough time here. I don’t want to be sad that it’s over, because we still have one more wonderful day ahead of us to enjoy the magic and beauty of Paris.

Voyage a Giverny

Today we had a change of scenery and a change of pace and tried something we’ve never done before: a bike tour. Mom, Kelly and I booked a Fat tire Bike Tour to Monet’s gardens and the town of Giverny. I honestly don’t think we coul’ve asked for a better day. It was cool and a bit gray in the morning when we took the Metro to the train station (Gare St. Lazar) but by the time we arrived in Vernon the sun had decided to part the clouds and shine down. The town of Vernon was quaint and this is where we stopped and had a bit of time to shop for our picnic lunch later in the day. In charming French fashion there were fromagerie, boucheries and boulangeries s we stopped in to gather supplies for our déjeuner. We filled our bike baskets with freshly baked and still warm baguette, cold cuts of meat cut straight from the boucherie, an assortment of wonderful cheeses, a bottle of pink and crisp rose and a small box of sweet treats from the boulangerie…probably more than we should’ve ate in one sitting!

After spending a bit of time we met back up with our small group and we collected our bikes; cute and adorable red and blue cruiser bikes with oh-so-cute baskets to carry out bottles of wine and baguette. Packed up and ready to roll, we took off through the town of Vernon, our guide stopping occasionally here and there to point out a historically significant cathedral or building. The town has an interesting mix of Tudor-style buildings and traditional French country-style buildings. We biked thru town for a bit before climbing over a bridge and up onto the other side of the Seine River. Biking through a small park we stopped by an old Tudor bridge and parked there to have a lovely afternoon lunch on the Seine River.

Our picnic along the Seine was absolutely perfect, there was a slight breeze, birds were chirping, the temperature was perfect and our lunch was simple and so incredibly French. We laid lazily in the grass along the Seine and enjoyed our meal and wine while our guide talked about Impressionism and the impact Monet had on the artistic world. I think all three of us would have been just as satisfied to lay here the rest of the afternoon but we had to move on towards Giverny and Monet’s gardens. We packed up the remainder of our food (which was just some cheese and sweet treats at this point) and got on our bikes again to continue our ride to Giverny.

The bike trail to Giverny was so beautiful. It rolled through the countryside with little Tudor-style homes, cows and wildlife grazing in the grass and wildflowers. No wonder Monet lived out here, every few feet you could stop and create a painting (or take a photo in our case). Eventually we made it to the town in which Monet lived and grew his now-famous and breath-taking gardens. Charming doesn’t even accurately describe it; I don’t think photos can even capture it either! Little open-air art galleries dotted the main street that led up to Monet’s house. Cute café and shops were here and there…mom and I wanted to stop in every single one.

Made it to Monet’s garden and home and it was just like walking into one of his paintings. His paintings are so realistic it really does feel like every step is a moment to be captured by a paintbrush. Just mesmerizing. The lilies, the weeping willows, the little row boat in the water- perfectly staged for an artist to capture a beautiful French country moment for people to adore for hundreds of years to come.

I can’t recommend this trip and tour enough. I’m not a huge planned guided trip gal, but Fat Tire Bike Tours did such a great job to make it laid back, casual, and let you really make the trip what you wanted it to be for you. Some people napped, others went to the house and gardens, some people shopped. My only complaint: I wish we had another 8 hours to spend exploring the town and eating another meal by the Seine. But I think that is what France does, it awakens your taste buds to life and makes you come back for more. La vie est belle!

After returning by train to Paris we decided to try our luck at getting up to the top of the Eiffel Tower as we hadn’t been able to do that yet. We got there and the line was long but not too terribly long so we decided to tough it out and wait in line. Well we did make it up to the top, and the view was wonderful by night but man oh man was it freezing up there. We were so unprepared for the weather and how cold it was that it was almost comical. I’m a little disappointed to say we didn’t even go all the way to the top because it was that miserable up there. However at least I can say I went up the Eiffel Tower! Next time I am going to bring a much thicker coat, gloves and a thick scarf because who knew that even in late May, Paris can still be freezing at night. Brrr!