If I had to choose a favorite city in the world, it would definitely be Paris. Obviously I haven’t been to every city, but I’ve been around, and so far it’s holding strong. 🙂

I first went to Paris in 2007 as a wee college girl, and spent a semester there on study abroad while I learned French and ate all the crepes.

Then, in 2013, I went back with my partner Josh. We visited a few countries and cities (London, Paris, Venice, Florence and Rome), but I insisted on spending almost a week of our vacation in Paris. I wanted to show him every inch of my magical city so that he would love it as much as I did!

In January, we got to go back to Paris because Josh had a work trip and he moved heaven and earth so I could come along! He was working while we were there, so I had a lot of time to hang out by myself. When I shared on Instagram the sort of things I was doing (I’ve already basically seen all of the sights, so not too many touristy things this time), I got several comments from people that are going to Paris this year! ¡Que suerte!

So here are some of my favorite Paris spots & tips in case you have a trip planned, or in case you’re wanting to plan a trip (you should! you so should).

MONEY EXCHANGE & CITY PASSES

Before leaving the US, we exchanged dollars for euros at the airport. Most places in Paris take American cards just fine, but the cash was nice to have for smaller places like crepe stands and convenience stores.

Once we got to Paris, we bought Paris Visite travel passes, which let you use all of Paris’ public transportation services (metro, bus, RER, etc.). You can buy a 1, 2, 3, or 5 day pass, so we got the 5 day one (and definitely got our money’s worth because it was too cold to walk everywhere).

If it had been my first time there and I was planning to go to a lot of museums, I also would definitely have gotten the Paris Museum Pass. We did that last time and it’s worth it if you’re planning to visit a few of the (manyyyy) museums in Paris.

MY BEST PARIS RECOMMENDATIONS

I want to preface this by saying that even though I don’t have many of the famous Paris landmarks on this list, you definitely should see those, too! But if you’ve been to Paris before, or aren’t interested in spending a lot of time in museums OR you’re going with kids, then maybe some of these are good options.

Bateaux-Mouches: When I lived in Paris as a student, I didn’t do this cruise down the Seine until nearly the end of my time there. At that point I was all eye-rolly about it (“soooo touristy!”) but then I did it and guess what? It was one of my favorite things I did there. I made sure to take Josh our first evening in the city together in 2013. Highly recommend this as a first-day-in-Paris activity because Paris is gorgeous from the Seine, and it gives a good introduction to the layout of things.

Rue Montorgueil: This is a permanent market street in the center of Paris. What this means is that it’s an adorable pedestrian area filled with cheese shops, bread shops and adorable brasseries. I love walking and exploring here!

Crepe stands at Trocadéro: Another rather touristy thing, but these crepes are the BEST! I don’t know if I’m always just really hungry when I’m there or if they actually are the best, but I’ve never been disappointed. The phenomenal view of the Eiffel Tower from here probably doesn’t hurt, either.

L’As du Fallafel in the Marais: The slogan for this Middle Eastern eatery is “toujours imité, jamais égalé” (“always imitated, never equaled”), so… there’s that. There’s normally a line out the door, but they move really fast and do have really great falafels, shawarma & kebabs.

Musée Rodin: The Rodin Museum is one of my favorites in Paris (maybe my very favorite). It holds a lot of Rodin’s sculptures (of course), but the grounds are also really beautiful and the museum café serves a delicious lunch.

STORES

Any of the hundreds of pharmacies: There’s one on almost every corner, and I don’t know why it is but there are few things so enjoyable for me as standing in one of these meccas of great skincare. I always pick up a few things to bring home for myself and as souvenirs (like this and this).

Merci: Part coffee shop/restaurant, part clothing store, and part bookstore, Merci is a beautiful place filled with beautiful people. I’ve never actually bought anything here except food at the cafe, but I love going in to look around.

HEMA (118 Rue Rambuteau): This trip was the first time I’d been here! It’s an awesome Dutch store filled with little things for pretty low prices. I came out with a coloring book, stamps, a bib, and modeling clay for my kids, as well as earrings, a hair barrette and office supplies for myself, in case that gives you a better idea of the kind of things they sell.   

SOME SUGGESTIONS IF YOU’RE GOING WITH KIDS:

A disclaimer first to say that I’ve never actually BEEN to Paris with kids (we left our girls with my suegros in New Jersey on a layover on the way there, then picked them up on our layover on the way back home). However, if I was going to take my kids, these are some of the places I’d want to go with them.

Puppet Show: Some of the bigger parks like Jardin de Luxembourg and Champ de Mars put on those classic old-school marionette shows. They’re designed for little kids, so even if no one in your group speaks French, they’re still pretty easy to understand and very cute! I couldn’t speak to exact times they do it at this point so I would check beforehand.

Rent a toy sailboat: I’ve seen these sweet little toy boat rentals during warm weather months at both Jardin de Luxembourg and the Tuileries. You get to choose your boat and then send it off into the pond while you guide it (if you’ve been to Central Park in NYC it’s the same kind of thing).  

Parc Floral: This is an enormous park towards the south-east of Paris that has the most amazing kids’ toys ever! The park is also just really pretty, with fields of flowers and all kinds of places to find a snack. But seriously, those slides. Tempting even as an adult.

Ride a carousel: There are tons of them all over the place, and they’re all so lovely and sweet. Might be kind of fun to do a carousel crawl one day!

I hope this is helpful if a trip to Paris is in your near future (can I come?!). And if you’re a Paris lover like me and I missed a great spot, let me know in the comments so I can add it to the list!

READ MORE

In Phoenix, Arizona there’s a place called Butterfly Wonderland. Its main attraction is a high-ceilinged greenhouse filled with plants, where more than 3,000 butterflies flutter around and, to the delight of small children and adults alike, will sometimes alight on a human shoulder or head or arm.

Before you get to go into the greenhouse, you watch a short film about the monarch butterfly’s yearlong migration from the central Mexico all the way to Canada. Not long ago, my two little daughters and I sat in the theatre. As I looked at their faces, aglow in the light of the screen, I thought to myself that we are butterflies, too. Every so often, we make the trip back to the small town in Northern Mexico where I was raised. It’s a long drive, but (thanks to the American passports we all have) we cross the border nearly as easily as the monarchs do. I know we’re lucky, lucky Mexicans. I never forget this.

This summer, I’ve thought about it often as I read account after account of kids separated from their parents and held in uncertainty in detention centers all across the U.S. I think about the price they’ve paid, just for crossing an imaginary line in the desert dirt: children forced to appear alone in court, babies returned to their parents sick and covered in rashes, toddlers unable to recognize their mothers after so much time spent apart.

***

The place where I’m from is a town filled with peach orchards and chili fields, run by cattle ranchers and schoolteachers from the local schools. As soon as we get close, my three-year-old starts repeating “Ya llegamos! Ya llegamos!” in increasingly higher decibels.

We unload from the car— in a frenzy of missing shoes, too many bags, and half-eaten snacks— and run inside my parents’ house to love our people. And you know what’s amazing? Kids know their people. Even if we haven’t seen each other for months and months, even if they’re a little shy at first, they can instinctively recognize family, instantly feel comfortable, secure, loved. The distance is the hard part of families split by borders, but the reunion? That’s the great part.

But this summer our arrival was bittersweet for me, because it happened at the same time as family separation at the border reached crisis level. As I watched my kids hug my mom, I thought about all of the mothers that had sent their kids off “for a bath,” only to find out a few minutes later that they had been taken away. When my extended family enveloped us in love, I thought about all of the families who had sought asylum in the U.S. (fleeing rape, violence and murder in their home countries) but had been met with hatred instead.

***

My little Mexican hometown is not strictly a border town—it’s technically about 3 hours away from the border—but it’s close enough that it kind of feels like one. Lots of people who live there have American citizenship, and often people will migrate from the U.S. to live there for a season or forever. Sometimes this migration is legal. Sometimes it isn’t.

When I lived there, the high school sports teams would sometimes play against American schools. We would load up the school buses and drive across the desert to play some small-town school in Arizona or New Mexico. Mostly this was not a big deal; sometimes friends didn’t have passports or realized their visa had expired, and then it was. Talented players trying to pretend that it didn’t matter that they had to miss the big game, a brave wave, some of us gone and some left behind.

Now that I live on the other side of the border, I keep having variations of this same experience. My brother’s family couldn’t make it to my daughter’s first birthday party because my nephew didn’t yet have the necessary paperwork to cross the border. My cousin very narrowly made it to my other cousin’s wedding after she wasn’t allowed to cross the border in time to make her flight.

In the grand scheme of things, these are minor injustices. I understand this more than ever, after a summer of thinking about the border and the families that cross it. I know that so many migrants hug their families goodbye and never get to hug them again.

***

In the end, Trump finally signed an executive order to end his family separation policy, but (weeks later) thousands of children are still in government custody after being separated from their parents. All summer long I’ve thought about how to write about this, how to best help the people experiencing it, how to talk about it to people who feel very differently than I do about the border.

It turns out the best I can do is repeat the words of Brené Brown:

“If your response is, ‘The parents should not have brought their children here illegally,’ know this: I pray to God that you never have to flee violence or poverty or persecution with your children. And, if the day comes that you must and your babies are forcibly removed from your arms, I will fight for you too.”

Human beings—especially the tiny ones—are infinitely more precious than butterflies. I hope to someday live in a world where their stories of migration across the U.S.-Mexico border are just as beautiful.

(Illustration by Juan Palomino from the book “María la monarca“)

READ MORE

I grew up in a town three and a half hours from the nearest airport, so long road trips were pretty standard for my family growing up. Now that I have my own kids, we alternate flying across the country to visit my in-laws and driving to Mexico to visit my family.

We recently made the long drive back from Mexico where we had been visiting for a few weeks. While we were there, I was visiting with a friend who mentioned that she was about to take her kids (ages 2 and 9 months) on a 13-hour road trip, and she was feeling nervous about it.

Since summer is the season of travel, I thought I would share some things that have worked well for our family! All of these have served us well on both our long flights and our long drives with babies and little kids.

1. All the snacks. If I’m being totally honest, snacks kind of drive me crazy because there’s nothing worse for me than taking the time to prepare a meal for my kids and then having them not eat it because they’ve been snacking all day. BUT. On trips? Snacks forever! We pack a huge bag and strategically roll out food throughout the trip. Bonus points for small things I can give out one by one, like raisins or cheerios (these are also great for hiding in one fist and having your kid guess which one it’s in—anything to draw out the eating process and keep them entertained!).
2. Libros (of course). I will admit right now that I hoard some of the Sol Book Box books so I can break them out just before a trip when I know we’re going to be heading out of town! I also love the idea of stopping by the library for a stack of new-to-us books right before we leave (I think that’s happened like once—we normally just bring books from home—but it’s a great idea in theory).
3. Save electronics for last. This is probably my best tip and the one I shared with my friend—save the screens for last! It seems like you could just break out the iPad and kids would zone out and stay quiet, but in my experience the opposite is true—screens more often wind them up, or they lose interest and get cranky. So we do stories, snacks, singing and well, pretty much everything else first, and try to save electronics for the last part of our trip (when everybody’s tired and/or screaming).
4. No-mess coloring. If you haven’t yet been introduced to Water Wow! books, they are the best thing ever! My kids will happily entertain themselves with them for much longer than I would have thought possible, and if they happen to spill nobody freaks out because it’s only water. We also recently tried this invisible ink marker coloring book, and liked it a lot too (not as much as Water Wow! if I’m being honest because the marker has a strong-ish smell, but it did entertain my three-year-old for a good 45 minutes on our trip).
5. RUN during stops. When our oldest was a baby, I remember going on vacation with some friends who, at every stop, would have their kids run races with each other for 5 minutes. I adopted that one immediately, and now have my preschooler hop like a bunny, gallop like a horse, or chase me around the car 10 times at all of our stops, too.

I’d love to hear your best travel tips! Tell me and I’ll add to the list!

READ MORE