This is part of a series from our recent travel to Europe in June/July 2026.
We checked out of Apartment #1 this morning and took a train to our second apartment in Paris. Trading one corner of Paris for another. Chris had picked this one, and he’d done well: right by the Hôtel de Ville metro stop, deep in the Fourth Arrondissement, about as central as this city gets. Notre Dame is close enough to feel like a neighbor now instead of a landmark. And the neighborhood happens to sit right around the corner from the city’s main LGBTQ district, which felt like a nice little detail to land in on the day our numbers were about to grow.
We didn’t linger long once the bags were down. Two solo weeks with Chris had a rhythm to them: slow mornings, no itinerary pressure, the two of us deciding things as we went. That rhythm was about to change, and not in a bad way. We headed back out to explore the new stretch of city while we still had a few hours as a party of two.
Jason, Jamie, and Izzy landed from Dallas today, which means the trip officially shifts gears. This is the leg we’ve been building toward since Hameln: my brother-in-law, his wife, and their daughter, thirteen this coming October, on their first trip outside the country. There’s something about watching someone see a place for the first time that recalibrates how you see it yourself, and I have a feeling Paris is about to get a fresh coat of wonder through their eyes.
They arrived tired in the particular way transatlantic travel makes you tired, that thousand-yard, we-slept-but-not-really look Chris and I knew well from ten days earlier. We didn’t ask much of them. Bags down, a little time to reorient, and then out the door before anyone could talk themselves into a nap that would wreck their jet lag recovery.
For a first proper meal together, we didn’t go far. An Italian place along the Seine, early enough that we practically had the terrace to ourselves, the river doing its golden-hour thing while we caught everyone up on the last ten days: Berlin, Hameln, the graduation, the trains, Brussels, all of it condensed into the kind of highlight reel you give people who’ve been following along from six time zones away. Izzy mostly just looked around at everything, which is exactly what you want a twelve-year-old to do on her first night in Paris.
It was an early night by design. Nobody fought it. Five of us now, all of us tired for different reasons, and the real version of Paris, the one with Jason, Jamie, and Izzy actually in it, starts tomorrow. Today was just the handoff: apartment to apartment, two travelers to five, quiet trip to loud one. I’m ready for loud.
