This is part of a series from our recent travel to Europe in June/July 2026.
Today was a quieter travel day, though it still managed to sneak in a little unplanned drama.
We grabbed breakfast in the morning and made our way back to Brussels-Zuid to catch our Eurostar train to Paris, arriving at the Gare du Nord around 12:18. I’d booked us a meeting room at a Regus location inside the station, thinking it would be a smart, air-conditioned place to park our bags and regroup before heading to the apartment. Instead we arrived to find the whole building without power, some kind of electrical outage, so we stashed our bags in the dark meeting room anyway and went off in search of lunch.
We stumbled onto a Nepalese restaurant called Crazy for Momo, and it turned out to be one of those unplanned finds that ends up being a highlight. The momos were phenomenal, and after a week that had been heavy on German food, something completely different felt like exactly what we needed.
Back at Regus, the power was still out. No sign of it coming back anytime soon, so we cut our losses and figured we might as well start making our way toward the apartment instead of waiting around in the dark. A short subway ride and a roughly one-kilometer walk later, we arrived at our home for the next couple of nights.
Chris had found another great Airbnb, this one on Boulevard Ney, in the Porte de Saint-Ouen neighborhood, part of the 18th arrondissement. It’s not the postcard-Paris part of town, but it’s real, lived-in, and exactly the kind of neighborhood we like landing in when we travel.
We got ourselves organized, and not long after, Luca showed up at the apartment. Luca was the German exchange student we hosted back in 2018, the same year our friends Brian and Randy in Frisco hosted Raphael, small world, all of it connected in the way these exchange-student friendships tend to stay connected. Luca’s been someone we’ve kept in close touch with ever since, and this was the day we’d been looking forward to for a while: reuniting with him in Paris, of all places.
From the apartment we headed off to meet Luca’s girlfriend, Adri, and her family for dinner. Adri had just graduated with her master’s degree here in Paris a few days earlier, which is why her whole family happened to be in town, good timing for us, if not entirely planned on our part.
Dinner was at Gusto Italia 218 on Rue de Grenelle, a solid Italian spot that somehow managed to seat all eight of us close enough to the Eiffel Tower that it felt like it was showing off just for us. Good food, good company, and that particular kind of celebratory energy that comes from a family still glowing over a graduation.
After dinner, we took a boat tour down the Seine, one of those things that sounds a little touristy on paper and then completely wins you over the moment the light starts to change and the city slides by on both sides. Paris at night from the water is one of those views that photographs never quite do justice to.
We said our goodbyes to Luca, Adri, and her family near the train, and as Chris and I walked back toward the apartment, we heard it before we saw it: a wall of yelling and cheering spilling out of a Belgian bar. Turned out a crowd had gathered to watch France take on Sweden in the World Cup, and the noise alone was enough to pull us in. We ducked inside, ordered a couple of beers, and let ourselves get swept up in a match we hadn’t planned on watching, surrounded by strangers who very much had.
If you ever find yourself in that part of the 18th arrondissement, Le Bar Belge at 75 Avenue de Saint-Ouen is worth seeking out: great beer selection, and a genuinely friendly crowd, World Cup night or not.
We wandered back to the apartment afterward, tired in the good way, the way you get after a day that didn’t go quite as planned but somehow gave you more than the original plan would have anyway. Tomorrow is our last day in Paris before Jason, Jamie, and Izzy arrive from Dallas and this whole trip shifts gears into its family chapter. For now, though, it was just the two of us, an old friend, some new faces, and a city doing what Paris does best.
