And suddenly we were down to our last week. We knew that the month in Paris would go by quickly, and it flew. After returning from our whirlwind trip to Normandy, we had precious few days to finish off our checklist of must-do’s.

We realized as the days wound down that although we had many things on our to-do list, there were only a few things that we really, absolutely had to do before we left town. Upon our arrival, I was excited with all of the things I was going to see and do – so much time to accomplish so much. And I realized going into our last week that while I hadn’t checked nearly as many things off my list as I had initially expected, I didn’t care. We had done what we did when we lived in New York. We lived day-to-day, we got to know our neighborhood, we got to know the city a little bit better, we found our favorite restaurants, and we spent time doing the things that we loved. We didn’t live like the crazed tourists we usually are on our trips, running on 4 hours of sleep a night while cramming as much into every single second as we can. We just lived.

So many of my trips have been crazed because I didn’t know if or when I would be back again. But because we are choosing to make travel such a priority in our lives, and because I know we may many years of travel ahead of us, I don’t feel that way this time. Especially with Paris. This was my 10th visit to the City of Lights and certainly won’t be my last.

What did we decide to do with our last days? We made another trip to the Musee d’Orsay to visit the works of our favorite artists, we visited Sainte Chappelle for the first time for each of us (amazing!), we walked through the city – a lot, we went shopping, we shot photos of the sun setting behind the Eiffel Tower from the top of Tour Montparnasse, ate our favorite quiche at Café Le Flore, bought a bottle of my favorite perfume, and bought the latest CD of Enrique Iglesias so we can listen to that ridiculous song we love in the car on our road trips.

Au revoir, Paris. A bientot.