This is part of a series from our recent travel to Europe in June/July 2026.
Eleven days in, and for the first time this trip, all six of us were in the same city. Jason, Jamie, and Izzy had landed the day before, jet-lagged and wide-eyed, and today was the first morning we all walked out the door together — Chris and me, and Chris’s brother’s whole family, ready to see what Paris would do to a twelve-year-old on her first trip outside the country.
We started slow, the way you have to when half the group is running on three hours of plane sleep. Breakfast was just around the corner from the apartment — nothing fancy, just coffee and something with butter in it, which by this point in the trip had become the correct answer to most questions.
Notre-Dame was close enough that it felt rude not to start there, so we did. It’s strange how a building can still stop you even when you’ve seen a hundred photos of it, even when it’s mid-repair and wrapped in scaffolding in places. Izzy stood there for a minute just looking up, and I had that thought you have as an adult watching a kid see something enormous for the first time — that you’re getting to watch the memory get made in real time.
From there we did what you do in Paris when you have a metro pass and no real plan: we got on a train. The Arc de Triomphe was next, sitting in the middle of its own traffic circle like it’s daring the cars to try something, and then we walked a stretch of the Champs-Élysées, which is exactly as busy and exactly as full of stores you could find in any airport as everyone warned us it would be. We ducked off onto one of the side streets for lunch — croissants, a baguette, something to drink, eaten more or less standing up — because by then the jet lag was starting to show on Jason and Jamie’s faces, and the goal shifted from sightseeing to just keeping everyone moving and fed.
We caught another train down toward the Eiffel Tower for the afternoon. We didn’t stay long — just long enough to stand underneath it, take the obligatory photos, and let it register that yes, we were actually here, yes, this was actually happening. There’s a version of this trip where we linger under the tower for hours, but this wasn’t that day. This was a day for a lot of small, good things rather than one long one.
We headed back toward Hôtel de Ville and the apartment to give everyone a chance to rest, since Jason’s family was clearly running on fumes by mid-afternoon. And this is where the day produced its first real bit of drama: on the train back, Chris, Jason, and Izzy made it onto the car. Jamie and I did not. The doors closed, the train pulled away, and there we were on the platform while the rest of our party disappeared toward the next stop. It’s a small thing — we caught the next train a few minutes later, no harm done — but there’s a very specific flavor of panic that comes from watching your husband’s face through a closing subway door in a foreign country, and Jamie and I got to share it together. We laughed about it by the time we reached the apartment. Mostly.
Dinner was the highlight of the day, and possibly of the trip so far. We found a place just up the road from the apartment called Comptoir Gourmet, on Rue du Temple, and it was, without exaggeration, one of the best meals we’ve had this entire trip. I won’t try to describe every dish because I’ll undersell it — just know that we left that table quieter and happier than we walked in, which is usually the sign of a very good meal.
After dinner, the group split. Jamie, Izzy, and Jason lingered at the apartment for a bit, understandably ready to call it a night. Chris and I, however, had a mission: somewhere in Paris, Australia was playing Egypt in the World Cup, and we were determined to watch it the way we’d been watching every match this trip — in a Belgian bar, ideally with a Belgian beer in hand. We found one in the first arrondissement, a spot called Bar Au Trappiste on Rue St-Denis, and it turned out not to be showing the match at all. We could hear it, though — the unmistakable rise and fall of a nearby crowd reacting to something happening on a screen we couldn’t see, which is its own strange kind of entertainment.
A few drinks in, Jason turned up to join us, apparently not as ready for bed as his jet lag had suggested. He and Chris ended up staying at that bar deep into the early hours, doing whatever it is brothers do when they get a rare night without their families around. I peeled off earlier and wandered back to the apartment on my own, through streets that were still busy even that late, half listening for World Cup noise the whole way home.
First full day together, and it already had everything — a landmark, a near-miss on public transit, a meal we’ll talk about for years, and a bar that couldn’t show us the game but let us feel it anyway.
