The other morning, one of the bakers asked me a question. I paused for a moment, but before she could finish repeating the question in English, I had answered her in French. The guy behind me leaned around and in a very thick French accent laughed, “Oh, he’s good.” It’s the small victories lol.

The trail followed a mountain stream out of the valley, and shepards led a group of horses along the other bank as we made our way toward the granite cliffs. The crowds quickly thinned, and we strolled along drifting from topic to topic as we gazed at the cold peaks etching their way through the cloud layer.

Today, I bit off a little more than we could chew.

Several summers ago, the family of the girl I was dating at the time hosted an exchange student from France, Pauline. I felt kind of bad that out of all the places in the U.S., she ended up in a forgotten whistle-stop in rural Tennessee, so we went out of our way to make sure she had a good summer from flying in the Cherokee to trips to Nashville and the symphony.

Paris is certainly one of those places. It’s the epitome of romanticization, but visiting the city in particular has never been at the top of my bucket list. After awhile, all of the big cities of the world start to blend together, but after hearing the wide range of opinions on it for most of my adult life, I wanted to see for myself.