Coup de Foudre

Making Polaroids in Paris

Chris and I are bad tourists. We aren’t huge on sight-seeing and are especially uninterested in spending part of our vacation standing in a long line to see something we once read somewhere that might be important for some reason.

On this particular trip, we knew we’d be seeing a lot of the Paris essentials while shooting Amanda and Chase’s elopement, so we were even less prone to seek out anything more specific than a cafe here, or a park there. Mostly we just like to wander. Pick a street or metro line and see what’s on the other end — that’s our style. For the record, Bois de Boulogne is an awesome place to go if you wanna get lost in a quiet, serene, crowd-free forest with the occasional prostitute standing on the side of the road.

We didn’t do anything terribly exciting on our own accord, neither of us speak a lick of French and I personally think the Eiffel Tower is kind of ugly. We walked a lot, took baths to soothe our aching feet, and had mostly boring meals because we were shocked by how expensive everything is. Though I don’t know that I’d ever use the word “boring” when talking about jambon de Vendée, which I snarfed at every opportunity.

Even still, I managed to fall completely head over heels in love with Paris, and dream of a life where I can make annual visits to La Ville-Lumière.

1. The view from our Air BnB apartment: Church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Croix in Menilmontant.
2. Chris at the bottom of our apartment’s staircase.
3. Sacré-Cœur Basilica — We didn’t go inside.
4. One of Philippe’s cats, Jimmy. =^..^=
5. The view from our room at Hotel de la Bretonnerie.
6. Mario Mosaic, by Invader, which we saw loads of!
7. Just a random, epic water fountain. No big D.
8. Upper lake at Bois de Boulogne, where we collected rocks and pine cones for souvenirs.
9. Our last meal in Paris, and the best one we had all week! Dinner with Philippe at Le Cafe Parisien. That’s Chris chugging some wine in the far left. I had duck for the first time. It ruled.
10. Dessert with Philippe. Chris had crème brûlée for the first time. It also ruled.