Day 13 The final day in France! 😭

This morning we all packed up our apartments in Avignon and took our bags to the train station to start the journey to Paris. The beginning of our trip home. We had two train connections which are intense and tricky with a group of people, but we made it!  Travel can be challenging, and it’s not always luxurious or glamorous, sometimes it’s carrying a heavy bag through a train terminal with 10 minutes to spare to catch the next train and wondering if you’ll make it or not. Sometimes it’s getting your bag stuck trying to squeeze through the metro entrance because it shut too quickly. It can be mentally and physically exhausting. But, the goal, OUR goal is to show how worthwhile it is to go outside your comfort zone. That you can do so much more than you think and experience so much more than you dreamed by treating the experience as an adventure instead of a vacation. The view from atop the mountain is so much better when you’ve hiked it as opposed to when you’re dropped off there from a helicopter. We work hard to give real, authentic experiences that are designed to make us all feel, for just a little while like we are french, or italian, or Spanish or whatever. We have most of our lives to act like Americans and that’s great. But we feel like we learn how to live better as citizens of the world, as well as Americans from these experiences. That’s what traveling is all about in our opinion. Anyway, from there We got to our final neighborhood in Paris, St Germain Du Pres. We walked the few blocks and got to the only hotel we will stay at in Paris!  The Hotel Verneuil. We had our honeymoon there and stayed there for the end of our trip last year also. We know the people and it is a very comfortable place to us. It really makes you appreciate an AirBnb though. It’s more expensive than our apartments and you don’t get as much space. It’s a very small room with a small by our standard bathroom but, by Parisian hotel standards, it’s amazing!  We got here, got our stuff brought up to our room, which was great and then we relaxed for a little bit. Then we went out and explored our neighborhood. We went towards the Luxembourg Gardens and stopped at this nice antique market in the plaza in front of Saint Sulpice church, of Davinci Code fame. After that we walked through the church. It was beautiful. A lot of great stuff in there. It’s amazing how many huge churches there are in Paris. After that we walked the Luxembourg Gardens which is like Paris’ Central Park. It was a little chilly but the Parisians were out in full force today!!  It’s a great place to just watch Parisians live their life and that’s what travel is all about to Emily and I. Being in the moment and watching the world around us. At home we are face down in our phones a lot!  We don’t do that much at all when we travel. Travel is about awareness. For dinner tonight we went to our very favorite place. Relais de L’Entrecote. My Sister and Brother-in-law bought us a meal there for our honeymoon and we were hooked!  There’s no menu, it’s salad, steak in a weird looking green sauce and frites that are darn close to McDonalds fries and I mean that as the highest compliment!  They keep bringing it until you say stop too!  The line was crazy long!  We got there about 20 minutes after they opened and they were already jammed. But it wasn’t bad and before long we told them how we like our steaks and the food started coming!  We all loved it!  What a fantastic meal to end this food festival with. Totally different from every other place we have been to. We typically go to small, mom and pop restaurants that are off the beaten path. This was big, crowded, in the middle of a crowded area and it was amazing!  We had great desserts too, a theme throughout the trip. Now we are back in our comfy room ready for bed knowing we have to wake up really early and head home from yet another adventure. A travel adventure and a life adventure. We led a group! Successfully!  A dream we have had for a while now. We feel ready to take on that challenge regularly now. So, anyone who wants to go on a trip like we offer, whether it’s as part of a group or as a family that we guide around. Contact us and we can Taylor something specifically for you!  Travel is a huge part of who Emily and I are as people, as business owners and as a couple. It fills our souls and helps us to be better business owners as well as better people. If you haven’t travelled abroad, do it! If you have, do it again!  We have so much to learn as a society and seeing that there’s a whole big world out there that does many things just like us, but so many things differently always makes us ponder the meaning of our existence and of our purpose. It causes us to look inward by looking out at others. Some of our best ideas for our lives have come while we are walking down a back alley or having a picnic in a park. I want to end this trip as I end all other, by thanking you all for coming with us on this journey and by telling everyone how important these experiences are. We love all of you and can’t wait to come home to our city of Charlevoix and to our shop and make more delicious food for our friends and customers and bringing the experiences we have had home with us so if you can’t travel, you can feel like you have for at least that little bit of time you share with us!  💕💕💕