I was in a book slump for around a month, where I just couldn’t get into anything I picked up. I might be late to the literary it girl party, but Aesthetica by Allie Rowbottom has been the perfect slump crusher. It’s a searing, vivid, exploration of influencer culture, impossible beauty standards, and the lenses with which we see the world — and ourselves.
It’s cozy season, which means it’s time to break out the candles to ward of 4 pm darkness. I’m on my 3rd re-purchase of this vetiver + cedarwood candle since last fall - it’s warm but fresh, and casts a good scent without being overpowering.
Was extremely excited to peruse the new Scandinavian from Scratch cookbook from Nichole Accettola. A celebration of baking from Sweden, Denmark and Norway, I’ll be steadily working my way through this cookbook all winter long. I took a first crack at a cardamom-spiced apple and pear snack cake last week, and have been dreaming about it ever since.
a very casual announcement: the earlybird travel guide series
One of my biggest personal challenges with social media has always been a feeling of expiration for my own experiences: that if I wasn’t ready, immediately, to share all the details of something, it was no longer timely or relevant. It’s a part of the reason I decided not to share about my pregnancy until it was 4/5ths of the way over: I wasn’t willing to document and process in real time. I want the ability to reflect on an experience once I have the wisdom and elevation of time and space away from from being in it.
This is especially true for me around sharing travel: I put so much time and effort into planning trips, have the time of my life documenting and return home full of so much energy and excitement to share about it, only to find once I had time to sit down and write, edit, design, and strategize how to publish and market something the moment had passed.
But, this is my newsletter, so I can share what I want! I’ve been slowly working my way through more than a few travel guides that I had almost completely written, but that have never been published for one reason or another.
The time has finally come to unleash the backlog!!!!!
When putting together travel guides, I weave together both my own experiences with tips and exhaustively researched recommendations to build out guides that feel like a catch up with your most type A friend - the kind that gives you the 411 AND gives you all the resources you need to plan your own one of a kind trip. In the guides you can always expect:
Planning & Prep
Logistics, Transportation and Lodging
Things to do: Arts & Culture, Food & Coffee, Other Experiences
My own curated Google map with all locations saved for easy reference and to support your own planning
Our full experience, with tips, reflections, recommendations and photos sprinkled throughout!
I love to travel so much, but am also a regular person with a full time job and real life responsibilities (and you know, a kid and a dog and a budget to stick to and only so many days off a year). It’s such a passion of mine to see and experience the world, and to make big travel feel manageable, affordable and attainable so you can as well. These guides really are a labor of love, and it brings me SO MUCH JOY when I hear that you have used them in planning your own adventures.
I have been loving jumping back into these guides and getting them fact checked, dressed up and ready for you, updating recommendations and links and finding additional resources like local creators. I’m so excited, and I hope you are too!
Let’s get after it!
XX
Ps. this is a long one, so you may need to expand in order to read in email, or hop on over to substack in your desktop browser for the full screen experience.
I’m feeling nostalgic this week. The first week of November is the anniversary of the first time I ever visited Paris while studying abroad back in 2012. It’s also the last weeks this time last year that I was pregnant, and spent so much time reflecting on my pregnancy, including our little babymoon trip to Paris!
If my husband Mark and I aren’t traveling domestically for family events, weddings and the like, we tend to prioritize what I affectionately refer to as Adventure Travel. Adventure travel is not relaxing. It is not a vacation. It does traditionally include feats of strength, like an 8 day trek to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro, or longer, multi-location international trips like French Polynesia or Japan. Fueled by a desire to make the most out of your PTO and to really make your time off “worth it”, you return from adventure travel exhilarated, accomplished, and maybe a little exhausted.
Last year, while we were preparing for the arrival of our first child in November I spent exactly 5 minutes considering where we wanted to go for our last big pre-baby trip. I thought about all the places I wanted to go but hadn’t been yet. I considered all the adventures we could sneak in before the deadline. And, exhausted as I was, I promptly closed all those browsers and settled on Paris. I wanted art, culture, beautiful pastry, and nice shopping. I wanted leisure. I wanted good public transit, and even better food.
In contrast to our normal planning extravaganzas, a long-weekend getaway trip to Paris presented a different kind of opportunity for me: to explore a city without a specific event or any constraints on our itinerary. Just a few days to explore and endless possibilities. This might not be groundbreaking to people who have ever had a single ounce of chill in their lives, but for me it was the exception to the rule for almost every non-work, non-family, non-wedding trip I have ever planned as an adult. It was an absolute delight.
I was so happy with the itinerary we put together – it truly felt like we made the most of our short time in Paris, and even while I left feeling like there was more we could have done, I felt like we really got to see, do, eat, and explore without completely running ourselves into the ground while doing it. For me, leaving a city wanting more is a much better experience than being absolutely ready to get home - especially at 6.5 months pregnant.
Flights: We knew we wanted to visit Paris in September – a few friends and some internet research let us know that a lot of Parisians leave the city in August for annual holidays, meaning that a lot of the best restaurants and shops are just closed and don’t re-open until September. We set up flight alerts in early March, and were able to book a direct flight from Seattle to Paris on Delta using miles from our credit card (plus the cost of fees - around ~$75). We left Seattle Wednesday afternoon, flew “overnight” and arrived in Paris early Thursday morning, and then left Paris Monday morning arriving in Seattle early Monday afternoon (shoutout to the time change!). Booking over the long American holiday weekend meant we got a 5ish day holiday and only used two days of vacation time – ideal if you can swing it!
Hotels: I was responsible for picking our hotel, and did a ton of research from a list of boutique hotel recommendations my friend Jess compiled (if you don’t know Jess - run, don’t walk! Her travel guides are STUNNING and she is the kind of travel curator, writer and photographer I aspire to be. After looking at all the hotels and considering what area we wanted to be based in we eventually booked The Hoxton in the 2nd Arrondissement.
Pros:
Super cute, stylish hotel with beautiful amenities
Hotel bar / restaurant / cafe was GORGEOUS and had such a fun ambiance - always full of people, good music, just a really fun atmosphere without being really loud
We really liked the location - close to all the things we wanted to do / very convenient to the metro without being overwhelmingly touristy
The room we booked (the smallest one they offered) was moderately priced and worked in our budget for the trip (around $230 per night).
Cons:
Really didn’t have any! Only ~small~ complaint I had was that we booked the “cozy” size room (aka the smallest size they offer, which was perfect for a short trip for two people) which didn’t have a door on the shower so even with a bathmat the bathroom tile would get pretty wet. Not a real problem and definitely probably solvable had we tried harder.
Money, language and other things to know:
Money: Paris is on the Euro, and most places take American credit cards (although, we found many places only took Visa or Mastercard / didn’t take American Express, including the metro ticket machines. If you’re an AmEx person, definitely plan ahead!)
Language: I found my experience in Paris to be EXTREMELY humbling. While I can navigate well in Spanish, I know almost no French and despite my best efforts to learn common courtesy phases before our trip, something about the cadence and accent of spoken French is incredibly challenging for me. I found I could do okay with written French (deciphering menus, subway maps and the like) but struggled to communicate directly. I found that leading with a few courtesy phrases in French (“I’m sorry, my French is not good, but…”) made most interactions much more positive, and many waiters or hostesses immediately would switch to English. Definitely a humbling experience for me
Itinerary Research & Planning: AKA: building an itinerary that does a lot without going overboard.
Since this was our first trip in FOREVER that wasn’t for a specific event or activity, I actually felt super daunted by all the possibilities in curating an itinerary. What museums did we want to go to? What neighborhoods to explore? How much typical “tourism” did we want to do? And most importantly (for me anyway!) how am I POSSIBLY going to choose where to eat?!
I started by compiling a list of all the things I was interested in doing, seeing, eating, or shopping – pulling from friends and commenters recommendations, online lists and travel guides, etc., and then saved all the locations on that list into a google map. This helped me mentally orientate myself to the city, and to get a sense of where all the locations are in reference to each other.
Once I saved all the things I was interested in into the map, I used it to pull together a loose itinerary that makes sense geographically - choosing activities, restaurants and other things in similar areas to avoid walking all over the place or having to loop back and forth repeatedly. As someone who frequently *does the most* while traveling, it was super important for us on this trip to actually relax.
In addition to geography, I limited my planning to focus on one or two big things each day (usually a landmark / museum/ other tourist attraction and a dinner or lunch reservation) and then built the rest of the itinerary around that. The google map played a big role in this while we were out and about - when we would have extra time we’d pull out the map, check out the clusters of saved locations near where we were, and use the map to decide which areas to head next to explore based on how much energy we had (instead of whatever aspirational plan I might have come up with while sitting at home on my couch!)
Day 1: Beat jet lag
Our flight arrived at CDG around 6 am. We have global entry and didn’t check bags on this flight, so passport control and getting out of the airport were relatively quick. It’s straightforward to take the metro from CDG into the city (I did it the last time I was in Paris in 2012) but for this trip we had scheduled a car to pick us up at the airport and take us directly to the hotel. Definitely a much easier way to get around on day one, even with rush hour traffic
We checked into our hotel around 9:30 am, and took an hour or two to shower and then grab a small pastry and coffee at the Hoxton hotel cafe. While we sat we chatted through our itinerary for the day with a primary goal of 1) making it through the day until our dinner reservation and 2) not going so hard on day one that we were fried for the rest of the trip. The hotel was stunning - definitely loved the lobby!
Around 1 pm we walked to lunch at Café élémentaire. They had a fairly structured lunch menu, which made ordering much easier than anticipated- Mark had a croque monsieur with fries and I had gazpacho, a farm salad and one of the best iced teas I’ve had in a long time.
After lunch, we walked to the Palais Royal and through the Tuileries Garden, stopping to enjoy all the different gardens and fountains before finally purchasing tickets to the Musée de l'Orangerie - home to the Monet Water Lilies Cycle. Monet is one of my favorite artists, and seeing the cycle was at the very top of my list for the weekend. It was absolutely stunning, and such a beautiful, immersive experience. I won’t tell you how many times I’ve cried seeing my favorite art in real life, but I’ll tell you at least two of them happened on this trip!
After the museum we decided to walk back to the hotel via the Colonne Vendôme - a great way to see some of the more upscale shopping areas and more fancy hotels like the Ritz and Park Hyatt Paris. At the hotel we took some much needed downtime to recharge our batteries and hydrate while trying not to fall asleep. I finalized some dinner reservations for the weekend, and booked entry times for the rest of the museums we wanted to visit.
Finally, we made it to dinner: the chef’s menu at Comice, a one-Michelin star restaurant and my favorite meal we ate in Paris. The food is decidedly “chef-y”, but absolutely delicious and service was impeccable. Standouts included the only eggplant dish I’ve ever truly enjoyed, a bright, summery gazpacho, and a honey-poached fig and almond cream tart that Mark declared “the best dessert he’s ever had ''. In case it’s not clear: I cannot recommend Comice enough – Jet lag aside it was our favorite meal of the trip, and truly such a special way to kick off our celebratory weekend.
Day 2: Landmark Tourism day!
Disclaimer: Day two was a little bit of a miss on the reservation and restaurant front, partially due to rain, and partially because I got the recommendation for both lunch and dinner restaurants today from a creator who was new to me at the time and who took beautiful photos of her recent trip to Paris. I took her recommendations to heart without much additional research, and I’ll just say we don’t have the same taste! Live and you learn.
We decided to spread out our “landmark” visits to minimize the amount of crowds we were voluntarily navigating on a given day. We started day two pretty early, taking the metro from near our hotel over towards the Eiffel Tower.
I had heard rave reviews about Poiláne (multiple people told me it was the “best bakery in Paris” - not sure I’m convinced but it was good!) so we started the day stopping in to pick up a few things for breakfast. We grabbed apple tarts and butter cookies to bring back home, and then spent time exploring the neighborhood, stopping in a few cute shops, including the adorable 1,2,3 Famille (HIGHLY recommend if you have littles in your life to shop for, it’s the cutest!) to pick up a few gifts and souvenirs before parking it in front of the Eiffel Tower to eat our pastries and snap a few photos.
We opted out of going up to the top, and instead headed over to a lunch reservation at Girafe near the Trocadero and Palais de Chaillot. This came as one of the more instagrammable recommendations on our list, and we had booked a lunch spot with the hope of being seated with the admittedly excellent view of the Eiffel Tower. Due to rain earlier in the day, the outdoor patio was closed and we were seated inside - a trend for the day. The food is primarily seafood, and overall we enjoyed it, although it would have been about 100 times better had we been able to sit outside with the intended view.
let it be said: French people were SO NICE TO ME. so much nicer than anyone in the U.S.!
In the afternoon we walked over to the Arc de Triomphe and explored the shopping along the Av. des Champs-Élysées, before heading back to the hotel for a break and refresh (have I mentioned how tiring it is to be pregnant?). We spent some time at the courtyard wine bar at our hotel to use the wifi and have a late afternoon iced tea (me) and cocktail (Mark) before heading upstairs for a quick nap and refresh to get ready for dinner.
We had plans for a one two punch for the evening: drinks at le Jardin Cheval Blanc, followed by a walkable dinner reservation at the famous Lapérouse. Le Cheval Blanc is a stunning luxury hotel in the heart of Paris with sweeping panoramic views of the city. We had heard from friends that their rooftop laptop bar was an excellent option for drinks to take in the view, but the outdoor patio was also closed because of rain and we weren’t able to be seated indoors. We chose to walk around the area and ended up just grabbing a pre-dinner drink at one of the many bistros in the area, which worked out just fine for us and had much more down to earth people watching than the hotel.
dinner at Laperouse!
Dinner at Lapérouse was what I would probably classify as a tourist trap, but a fun one? It was the first restaurant in Paris to earn 3 Michelin stars in 1933, and has been a famous meeting spot of cultural icons and celebrities for years (or so they say ;)). My take: it was certainly not packed with locals, but we enjoyed the experience and the food was good! In full transparency, we were on a waitlist for a reservation at a different restaurant, and had we gotten in I absolutely would have canceled this.
Day 3: Shop & explore
Day three was probably my favorite day of the trip end to end, likely because it relied heavily on tips from my friends Jess and Kyle – both have impeccable taste and contributed to my own planning immensely.
We started the day with breakfast and coffee from I.O Café - a sparkling americano and a chocolate pinwheel croissant for me and a decaf tea for Mark and it was probably my favorite of the trip. A wonderful little shop on a street with decidedly sweet neighborhood vibes. Maybe it was the fact that I was six months pregnant, but Mark and I were both struck by how many cute dads were out on coffee dates with other dads and the most chic little kids. The dream, am I right?!
After breakfast we strolled through the Le Marais neighborhood for a morning of shopping around the boutiques. A few favorites:
I had wanted to round out the morning with another coffee from Hélène et Madeleine, but by the end of the shopping spree I was feeling like if I had another coffee I might die. Instead, we headed back in the direction of our hotel to get lunch on the Rue du Nil, a delightful street full of food shops (bakery, creamery, butcher, grocery, etc) and a number of famous restaurants focused on local ingredients. We had tried to get reservations at Michelin starred Frenchie (no luck!) and instead opted to grab lunch at their fast-casual concept Frenchie To Go (FTG). We grabbed sandwiches, iced tea and chips, and it was one of the best meals I ate our entire trip (I was devastated to discover upon updating this guide in 2023 that FTG is permanently closed, but the other spots remain open!).
After lunch we once again returned to the hotel for a nap before our afternoon reservation at the magnificent Musée d'Orsay. Booking ahead online meant we didn’t even wait in line, and walked right in to explore the collection. As much more of an art lover than Mark, I was absolutely thrilled to explore the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces. (I can neither confirm nor deny whether I cried in front of a Van Gogh).
After the museum, we walked into the historic Latin Quarter to explore on the way to see Notre-Dame (which, as of this writing, is still closed for repairs). On the walk over we stopped into CityPharma, the haven of French Skincare to load up on essentials, some of which I have been OBSESSED with for a year plus. I followed tips and recommendations from Charlotte Palermino and Condiment Claire - highly recommend following them both!
We rounded out the day with a dinner reservation at Dalia, a Mediterranean restaurant close to our hotel for one of my favorite meals of the trip. Don’t miss the baba ganoush, the mezze and sesame flatbread, or the black sesame pavlova. Chefs kiss!
Day 4: Back to the tourism
Day 4 was our last full day in Paris before heading home, and the earliest morning of our trip. We had been so impressed with the Rue du Nil the day before we headed back to the bakery to pick up pastries (classic croissant for Mark, pain au chocolat for me) and then walk over to the Louvre before it opened. We ate our pastries in the courtyard, snapped a few pics, and then queued up to enter with our reservation right at opening, allowing us to explore the treasures of this world-renowned museum in a peaceful, unhurried atmosphere.
mom & dad!
After the museum, we stopped into Cafe Kitsune - another highly recommended spot when researching our trip. I’ll be honest: the flat white I got wasn’t my favorite (a bit acidic for my taste!) but the location was lovely overlooking the museum.
We wrapped up our last push of tourism to visit Sacré-Cœur, the magnificent basilica perched atop Montmartre. We hopped on the metro and enjoyed a (somewhat leisurely, somewhat straight up hill) walk through the charming neighborhood. I’d love to tell you that we savored the breathtaking views of the city from the basilica's steps but it was so crowded we took a few quick looks and some photos and just got the heck out of there.
Even with a fairly laid back travel itinerary, the amount of walking was catching up to me, so we scrapped any additional plans for the afternoon and focused on relaxing. We stopped into a few boutiques (BA&SH - so lovely!) and then dropped in to Soho House for lunch and some down time in the courtyard -to relax and hydrate before retracing our steps on the metro back to our hotel.
My last major event for the weekend: stopping into the Sezane and Octobre Apartments on invitation from the team there! After having been an online fan for so long it was amazing to see the store in real life, and to have the opportunity to try a few of their gorgeous, sustainable items on. walked away with a new wallet and a few maternity and nursing friendly staples, as well as a few items from Octobre for Mark (this sweater is an all time fave)
If you take nothing else from my guides take this: get the souvenir you will use! I personally don’t do much shopping in real life, but I have found that I really love selecting wearable souvenirs when I’m traveling: rather than a knick knack that will create clutter, or a designer piece you only have occasion to use once a year, choosing a daily use item (perfume, a wallet etc) invites you to remember your experience every time you use it. One of my favorite coats is a pink wool coat I bought in Tokyo: it wasn’t my normal style, but I just LOVED it and couldn’t stop thinking about it when we were there. And now, it’s such a topic of conversation every time I wear it, I get compliments and love remembering our trip. I’m happy to report that the same is true for the things I picked up on this trip (much more spendy than usual!) I still use them regularly and they bring me so much joy every time I do!
Our last dinner was a tough one: we didn’t have reservations and rather than doing the smart thing (sticking to the plan, which was walking out and picking the first local spot that looked good), we tried to over-optimize. I think I was overtired and extremely emotional at this point, but I distinctly remember not just wanting *a* bistro, but *the best* bistro for our “last meal” on our “last trip” before the baby. We all have our moments, and for whatever reason this one took me from a very normal, very stable person enjoying a nice trip with my nice husband into a blubbering, over tired mess in about 4 minutes. Hormones are *wild*. We ended up at Brasserie Dubillot and it really was quite lovely - traditional French food, regional dishes and a wonderful “last meal”, no tears necessary.
Departure
We flew home early Monday, and coordinated a car back to the hotel to avoid carrying luggage on the metro during rush hour. Travel was smooth and easy, and we were home in Seattle by Monday afternoon - plenty of time to shower, unpack, and grab some groceries for the week ahead!
on reflection:
I know I tee-ed up this guide saying that we were going to have a relaxing weekend trip to Paris, and then I proceeded to write you an 11 page run down of all the things we did (because you know, old habits die hard). But this was such a special trip, and I think part of the reason we enjoyed it so much was because we were able to stay true to the heart of the kind of travel that we love and enjoy, while also giving us time to enjoy and relax.
This was the first time since we visited Seattle in 2017 that we have really traveled to a city “just because”, and I really liked the way that we did it. Choosing 1-2 major destinations or events each day and then building the rest of the day around it made things make sense, logistically, and kept us from feeling too much pressure to go go go go go and see all the things. We had some wins and some misses, but overall it was such a wonderful trip that I would absolutely do again.
Okay y’all that might be even longer than my Mt. Kilimanjaro guide, which may or may not be a personal record. This is a slightly different format than I have done in the past and would love to hear what you think! What’s working for you and what isn’t, format wise? Do you have any questions I didn’t cover? Let me know!
PS, f you’re more of a visual learner, I got you! I organized our trip in a spreadsheet like a lunatic, but this is the beautiful byproduct, and our vfinal itinerary!
Thank you for re-upping this! I'm planning a trip to Paris in a few months and haven't been back since college, both overwhelmed and excited. Your guide is helping me focus and I agree with your souvenir tip! Wearables, books or art are my go-tos
Love this guide and these tips! We are spending this Christmas in Japan and planning on using the 1-2 planned meal/site/museum/destination per day method--love google maps for this. Can’t wait to read your Japan guide/tips next month
Thank you for re-upping this! I'm planning a trip to Paris in a few months and haven't been back since college, both overwhelmed and excited. Your guide is helping me focus and I agree with your souvenir tip! Wearables, books or art are my go-tos
Love this guide and these tips! We are spending this Christmas in Japan and planning on using the 1-2 planned meal/site/museum/destination per day method--love google maps for this. Can’t wait to read your Japan guide/tips next month