[jyl]

Thank you for taking the trip and then taking the time to bring us along.

Paris is truly a special place. I will share a couple of my memories.

I lived in Paris when I was 5 and 6. My dad was off doing whatever mathematicians do, often in Strasbourg. My grandmother came to live with us and take care of me. She was old even then and spoke no French. I was in school, spoke French like a native kid, and was essentially a latchkey child. I had a large supply of Metro tickets and spent hours exploring Paris, going to every Metro station, wandering the whole city, the sketch parts and the glorious parts, completely alone and unsupervised. Think of a 6 year old with freedom to go anywhere in a great city, and think of the city where a 6 year old could do that with nothing at all happening.

Much later my wife and I lived in Paris with our 2 year old daughter. I was now the one in school and Mary took Kate out every day in her stroller to explore. Paris is very urban but it has tiny parklets everywhere and they are tidy, carefully tended, with little play structures and grassy spots, and the city has an army of park tenders who maintain these little oases. That's just a little example of what makes Paris a place to live as well as visit. It's not just about packing people in and extracting their money. The things that make miles of dense buildings and busy streets a humane, lovely, welcoming place to live are on display in Paris in a way that most cities, including most in the US, aren't doing.

Around that time we went to a New Year's eve party at the apartment of some French people in the 1ere, not far from the Arc de Triomphe. At 2 am we left to return to my friend's tiny apartment that was on the other side of the city, in a much less prosperous arrondisement. There were no taxis, because French cab drivers don't pick up street hail rides at 2 am on January 1st, and this was pre-Uber, and the Metro was closed. So we walked for, I'd guess, five miles through the city at night, carrying a two year old, from about 2 am until around 4 am. We felt no unease at all. This wasn't just us being naive Americans, as my Parisian friend was walking with us and he confirmed, what we were doing was perfectly safe. By the way, champagne and Paris at night make a long trek like walking on clouds.

For your next trip, I'd recommend Marseille. It is my favorite large city in France, actually. Very different from Paris - I wouldn't necessarily walk through Marseille at 2 am - but it is amazing too.