I haven’t actually taken my kids to Paris in the spring, but a girl can dream right? This picture is from July in Paris. I hope that doesn’t disappoint you too much.

For Photo Friday at Delicious Baby.

One of the things I love about all the travel I’ve done, both with my kids and without, is that I have many places to return to in my mind when I’m feeling blue.

I’ve been lots of places that I love, but for me none can rival Paris. I can’t really explain it, but from the very first time I set foot there at twenty years old – literally half a lifetime ago for me – I felt like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face (which, not surprisingly, is my favorite movie of all time). To me no other city is as beautiful or satisfying.

This affection is only increased by the fact that my boys loved it there as much as I do. Our Parisian trip in the summer of 2008 was a family travel high point for all of us. We had a marvelous time. And one of the boy’s favorite activities was visiting the playground at the Jardin du Luxembourg. So when I need a little boost, or a reminder of what this traveling with kids thing is really all about, or just a glimpse of some chubby toddler legs, I love to look at our photos from that day, our first full one in Paris. I especially love this picture of Tommy:

That little blond boy next to him kept shrieking “Attends! Attends!” (Wait! Wait)  or “Plus vite! Plus vite!” (Faster! Faster!) and without fail Tommy would do the exact opposite of what he was demanding. But it didn’t matter – they spoke the international language of childhood facilitated by utter and complete joy.

And of course, no visit to a French playground is complete without a real carousel ride on a giraffe.

Do you have a family travel happy place? If so, I hope it makes you feel as good as these pictures make me feel.

For Photo Friday at Delicious Baby.

Twenty years ago, I spent Christmas in Paris. It was the first time I had ever been away from home for the holidays. I’d like to say that I spent it well and giddily as any 20-year-old should, but unfortunately I was too caught up in my own homesickness to enjoy it properly. Despite my unhappiness, there were some enchanting moments: Browsing for used books to give as gifts in the stalls on the Left Bank as fat snowflakes drifted onto my head; a group of uniformed school children singing uproariously while I admired the amazing confection of lights and window displays of the Galeries Lafayette department store; and perhaps most memorably, enjoying a festive meal (complete with champagne and the traditional bûche de Noël for dessert) in an apartment overlooking the Champ de Mars with the Eiffel Tower shimmering in the dark December night outside the window. But these scattered moments of joy only served to highlight how miserable I was, how unable to find comfort in a sea of strangers in a city that suddenly seemed nothing but foreign to me even though I had been there for several months.

I remember particularly Christmas dinner in the foyer where I lived that year. This was an international dorm run by a sophisticated group of nuns who smoked and wore jewelry and didn’t seem to mind that they were surrounded by young women in miniskirts who were infinitely more interested in watching Madame est servie (the French name for Who’s the Boss?)  than attending daily chapel. There were women from 80 different countries living there, including a sometimes uneasy mix of Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian residents.

That Christmas afternoon, heartsick and about to become desperately physically ill with the flu, I picked at the food that the kind sœurs had prepared for those of us with nowhere to go for the holiday and tried to smile as the Japanese woman sitting next to me talked in broken French about how strange we Westerners were to drink milk and eat cheese. She blamed this for the body odor that (she haltingly said) made it difficult to eat in the same room with us. Murmuring excuses to her and the others, I fled the brightly lit dining room and the city altogether, catching an overnight train to Venice. This bold but disastrous solo trip would end in few days as I burned with fever for hours in the train station and all the way back to my small room in the 14^th Arrondissement where I shivered and sweated as I listened to the city around me welcome in 1991. I didn’t leave for days, my only company a battered copy of Dr. Zhivago that I picked up goodness knows where.

I’m not sure I had the good sense at the time to recognize a squandered opportunity. In fact, I’m convinced that with the hubris of youth I assumed I would one day return to Paris to enjoy a proper Christmas (Oh the belief that one always gets a do-over!).

And of course now, a lifetime later, I’m still waiting for a Parisian Christmas to happen. What holiday magic would my boys and I devise were we to climb on a plane tomorrow? Riding the Ferris wheel in the Jardin de Tuileries perhaps. A puppet show in the Jardin de Luxembourg. Shop windows, pastries, cups of hot chocolate in Angelina’s mirrored dining room. Strolling through Montmartre in a snow storm. And always the lights of the Eiffel Tower, a beacon in the deep darkness that comes so early at this time of year.

I’m dreaming today this return and also of the 20-year-old child that I was. I know that girl would be with us as we explored, wondering how she could ever be unhappy in Paris, at Christmas.

What are your Monday dreams? Please feel free to share them below.

All photos except the obvious one via Flickr. Galeries Lafayette courtesy of josephowen. Notre Dame courtesy of Panoramas. Ferris wheel courtesy of CharlesFred. Eiffel Tower courtesy of realityfanclub

And while we’re talking dreams – Passports With Purpose has exceeded its goal of $50,000 to build a village in India. But they are still collecting donations (they’ll surely be put to good purpose!) – and you can still enter to win one of the many magnificent prizes until 11:59 PST on Monday, December 13.

So somewhere around a year ago I moved my blog from its original home on Blogger to this lovely space on WordPress with the pretty design and various whizz-bangs that have made me very happy. And one thing I was supposed to do when that happened was revisit my old content to spruce up the photos, all of which needed to be put up on the new server manually. I’m sure you know where this is going…after a year of enthusiastic writing and posting it is only now that I am returning to those old posts (and not a minute too soon – apparently I didn’t know anything about how to write a post title or edit a photo then).

I’m a little sorry it’s taken me so long, because I’m really enjoying looking at the old posts. Right now I’m deep in the middle of revising all the posts about our trip to Paris in July of 2008 – my first trip as a blogger in fact. I was so enthusiastic to be starting the site that I actually live blogged almost every day of our two-week vacation. From our disastrous lunch on our first full day in Paris to our amazing visit to Versailles, it’s all there as it happened. There’s something very fresh and immediate about looking at these posts, and it pulled me right back to our apartment in Paris and the lovely time we had there.

Since that time I’ve moved away from that live blogging to posts that are more planned. Lately I’ve been more likely to write about a trip after I come home, and while there’s nothing wrong with writing some more considered posts, I do feel that something gets lost with the passage of time. And so as I work on sprucing up my site, I’m also resolve to recapture some of that old excitement by making a renewed commitment to writing from the road.

And what better time to do so than at the beginning of another ten-day trip? Today I’m headed for Los Angeles with Tommy and Teddy and if the Gods of the Internet allow it, I will be trying to post from the road most days while we are gone.

If you’re curious about the origins of this site and would like to read about our trip to Paris, I recommend the post Paris in its proper order, which includes chronological links to all of the posts in that series. I haven’t finished updating all of the pictures yet – but then spring cleaning is always a process, isn’t it?

(The picture is Teddy at Versailles. He is decidedly not cleaning the windows).

As everyone knows the French have a lot of ideas about food, most of which I agree with, although you’ll never convince me that coffee shouldn’t be served at the same time as dessert, especially when that dessert involves chocolate.

But despite my fondness for French cuisine, poor Tommy had a hard time when we were in Paris. Don’t get me wrong – he did quite well on the pastry/Nutella crepe/ice cream front. And he absolutely loved all the fabulous green bean salad I made from the fresh haricot verts I purchased at the organic market at the Place Monge (and well he did, since they cost about 20 dollars a kilo). He also ate a slab of cod about the size of his head when we took him out to dinner at Le Train Bleu.

But Tommy doesn’t like meat all that much and he’s also not a fan of cheese. So when we stopped for a café lunch one afternoon after a morning at the Musée d’Orsay, there wasn’t much to please him on the menu since both steak and a croque monsieur, the French version of grilled cheese, were out of the question. He was however eager to drink hot chocolate with a healthy topping of whipped cream, at treat he’d been enjoying since the first day we arrived. So we told him he could have one to accompany his ouefs mayonnaise, which is hard-boiled eggs topped with an aioli-like sauce.

The waiter actually visibly blanched when we placed the order. I could see that he was seconds from refusing to serve the two things to my child concurrently, but glancing at Tommy, he obviously found that he had the strength of character to overcome everything he had ever been taught since childhood.

And Tommy enjoyed it mightily.

This post is for Wanderfood Wednesday at Wanderlust and Lipstick. I hope you’ll check out the other food-related posts over there. And come back tomorrow for a bit more on our 2008 trip to Paris, which I’ve been revisiting this week as I do some spring cleaning around my blog.

I am prone to dream of Paris pretty much on any day. But in honor of the fact that Halloween is later this week I thought I’d focus on something sweet. Now Paris is the dream capital of my heart and home to so many yummy and pretty things that it can be hard to choose (if you’re a regular reader, you know that ice cream at Berthillon is my typical go-to). But if you’re looking for beautiful and delicious it’s hard to beat Ladurée.

Although there is now a gorgeous and glamorous outpost on the Champs Elysees and another on the Left Bank (to say nothing of London, Zurich, and Tokyo), what I’m dreaming of today is the original Ladurée Salon de Thé on the Rue Royale about a block from the Place de la Concorde. It’s been there since the late nineteenth century and is decorated at the height of Belle Époque style. I didn’t take the boys there when we were in Paris and I’ve been kicking myself ever since. I know that they would love the pastel boxes stacked in the windows filled with a rainbow of macarons, the frescoes on the ceiling, the gilded walls, the heavy silver pitchers…and of course the large case full of pastries, each as carefully and intricately constructed as a sculpture.

So what treats would we sample on a fine autumn afternoon? I’d of course let the boys choose from that case. But here are a few that I might recommend:

• For my purple-loving younger son, perhaps a Religieuse à la Violette, a puff pastry filled with violet-infused cream and topped with purple fondant icing and a candied violet. (A religieuse looks a little bit like a snowman, with one large round pastry topped by another smaller one – I’m sure this would add to its appeal).
• Tommy might enjoy a Saint-Honoré – this fabulous concoction has a puff pastry base topped with caramelized pastry balls (along the lines of profiteroles), vanilla cream, and lots of whipped sweet cream on top.
• And for me, some Macarons Bergamontes – almond macaroon cookies filled with a bergamont cream (think of Earl Gray tea and you’ve got the flavor).

The boys would have drinks to accompany their pastries; certainly a Chocolat Chaud Ladurée while I think I’d stick to tea – perhaps the blend named after Marie Antoinette, which is described thusly on the menu: “delicious China teas mixed with essential oils of subtle citrus fruit, rose and jasmine flowers flavour, scattered with small pieces of dried fruits and honey.” That almost sounds like dessert itself doesn’t it?

We’d also have to leave with one of those gorgeous boxes full of the handmade chocolates. Just because I would want the shopping bag as a souvenir.

Look for more posts this week about treats in various corners of the United States and beyond – after all, we need to get ourselves mentally prepared for all that candy. What treats are you dreaming of on this delicious Monday? Please feel free to share a link below, making sure you link directly to your post, not your site’s homepage and that you link back to this post. Questions? See About Monday Dreaming.

The top photo is courtesy of the fabulous Jen Laceda whose blog Folie à Deux is a treat for the eyes (see her posts about Parisian treats here and here). Thanks also to Ben Golub for the picture of the pastries and Yuichi Sakuraba for the final photo.

Tommy recently came home with a completed writing assignment titled “The Best Day of My Life.” Here is what he wrote (all spelling & punctuation is reproduced exactly):

The best day of my life was when we went to Paris! It was outstanding!!! First, we had croisonts for breakfast. They were so delicious my mouth watered!!! Next we went to Claude Monets house. It was beautiful! I drew his japanese brige. And then we had a no interjection lunch (meaning no comment). Last, we had a remarkabaly terrific ice cream. It was a horribly great day!

As you can tell, they were being encouraged to use all of their descriptive words. I can only assume that the “no comment” lunch was the one at the  l’Ambassade d’Auvergne, and if so, I commend his discretion.

An essay like this my friends, is why I travel with my children. I look forward to years of great reading.

This isn’t my favorite picture taken of me and Matt. I’m definitely a little squinty. Actually, make that a lot squinty (curse those light-colored eyes!). But I was looking for a photo of the two of us to celebrate our upcoming getaway. This is always something of a quest, because for every 100 pictures of the children I have maybe one lousy one of me and Matt. Anyway, in my search, I ended up paging through my pictures from Monet’s garden at Giverny. These elicited such a great longing for warmth and color and scent in me that I had to use one, so this is it. We are standing across the pond from the famous Japanese bridge that Monet painted so many times and which Tommy drew a picture of.

Spring is coming here and with all the flowering trees in the Mid-Atlantic it is lovely in an Impressionistic sort of way. But in my book there’s nothing to beat Giverny for loveliness. It makes quite a frame for us tired-looking parents doesn’t it?

For Photo Friday at Delicious Baby. I hope you’ll visit there and all the other posted pictures too.

Looking at Tommy, so determined to catch those rings on the Jardin de Luxembourg carousel in Paris makes me think of the work and determination it’s taken to get my new site up and running. A big part of that work was unglamorous and organizational. But if you’ve visited over the past couple of days, I hope you’ve noticed all the lovely ways you now have to browse. Those gorgeous headers in the left-hand sidebar all preside over links galore to my old content, allowing you the freedom to roam among my family’s travels and my musings about life on the road. Descriptions of what content goes in each of these sections is available in the About tab.

The picture also applies because I feel like I’ve found a prize in Cathy of Desperately Seeking WordPress. It’s thanks to all her hard work behind the scenes that my content is so gorgeously cataloged. Among many other things, those lovely links you see on the left are all thanks to her. She’s the brains behind the beauty and without her I would not have been able to make my content so accessible. I hope you’ll find something you like; if you don’t, please visit the Archives, which she also executed. It offers still more ways to search and browse for posts.

Of course, this is a work in progress. Eventually, you’ll be able to click on those lovely headings in the sidebar and see all of the posts in each category on one page. I’m also working all the time to refine how I have things sorted and if there’s a category here that doesn’t make sense or if I’m missing something you’d like to see, please let me know.

The picture on top is for Photo Friday at Delicious Baby, a completely fabulous place to get information about traveling with kids. I hope you’ll visit and check out the other participants’ photos! And for the end of the story: Tommy did manage to catch all the rings, only to dump them on the ground in his excitement moments later.

And you can grab a brass ring of your own. Tomorrow I’ll reveal just how you can enter to win a $25 Amazon gift card. But to find out you’ve got to either subscribe or come back to find out how!

[And one more small thing. For all of you who subscribed to the old Blogspot site in a reader – not my email subscribers – can you do me a favor and re-subscribe to the new site? The old feed is working but I also had to set up a new one. I'm going to be getting rid of the old one sometime soon so that the search engines' minds don't get blown. I'll keep sending friendly reminders for a week or so before I make that feed disappear.]

I’ve been thinking back of highs and lows of our travel year for some posts I plan to write over the next few weeks and have also been thinking about our next plane trip the day after Christmas. Flying to the upper Midwest in the winter is something I’ve done often during the past two decades, and I’m wondering what wonderful weather surprises we have in store for us. Maybe, like last year, it will be simply the joy of a clear sky and smooth flight. Maybe. Or perhaps there will be a series of photos of us standing in line, reading, eating, and sleeping in the airport. One never knows!

This picture is for Photo Friday at Delicious Baby. Please stop by there and check out the other wonderful posts. And I also wanted to remind you about Passports With Purpose – less than two weeks to make a donation and enter to win a slew of fabulous prizes. And starting today, Angela at Just Go! will be hosting a giveaway: three packages each containing a calendar of Rome and a Passports With Purpose raffle ticket. To enter the giveaway, you must tell Angela which raffle prize you’d like to win in the comments field at her site. Visit Passports With Purpose to see a list of prizes and good luck to all!