4/18 In Paris

So the big 4/18 Club–and by big I mean we have 3 members from my clan alone: Lil A, my cousin Steven, and yours truly–is having its day today, but unfortunately we are not all together to celebrate it. However, the great thing about membership in a club is that even distance can’t keep us from coordinating our outfits!

My sister and I had had a quick conversation about Lil A’s outfits for her bday party a few weeks ago, and as the event was French themed, I’d suggested something with navy stripes and red leggings, primarily because I was secretly hoping back then that I’d myself get to wake up in Paris for my own bday and had visualized wearing something similar (err, minus the leggings). So I was thrilled when she emailed me that picture of Lil A in her birthday outfit!

And while Lil A was killing it in NYC with her fashionista self (3 outfit changes if I’m not mistaken from the pics I received!), her aunt was celebrating a mellower day in Paris. All I’d really wanted to do this year was to spend 4/18 in Paris with zero agenda. No long shopping list, no new museum exhibits to chase down, no appointments to keep. Just a girl in the city with a camera.

But first things first…aren’t sweets always a prerequisite for birthdays? I’d walk on hot coal and through a blinding snowstorm for these Ladurée macarons–my favorite flavors are definitely the Pétale de Rose and Café.

Is 9.50am too early for champagne? Perhaps…so with my morning loot of sweets in hand, I head over to the Chanel mothership on rue Cambon to see if I couldn’t find a dream jacket for a birthday pressie.

That’s the lovely La Madeleine, a church that looks more like a temple, looming behind me in the above picture. But let’s get back to the matching outfits…see what I mean by the striped top on me in these pictures? There are not only stripes on the sweater but also on the buttons!

I strike out at this boutique…lovely items as usual (store was packed even this early in the morning) but nothing different from what I’d already seen and bought in NYC. Plus the shoes I was hoping to find in Paris for less than in the US after VAT refund were not available. And no sign of that dream jacket, which is becoming more and more elusive by the day. I am, however, tempted by a pale, pale pink Chain Me flap–not released in the US–but I email my Chanel Anonymous sponsor and am promptly talked out of falling off the wagon. Boo, what fun is it to curb your binge on your bday!

But as all you addicts know, we usually trade one addiction for another. So by the time I get off the metro at the Père Lachaise Cemetery I am dying to devour the macarons…

And no, I don’t find it macabre or morbid to visit a cemetery on your birthday. Walking through large cemeteries filled with ornate tombstones is to me a great reminder not of the dead but the living. It’s actually quite peaceful in this parklike setting (more on this cemetery in another entry)…of course, until you get close to Jim Morrison’s gravesite, where there is always a lot of activity.

I grab lunch, followed by a blackcurrant violet macaron (I really wish they made diabetes-friendly versions so that I could bring some home for my mom), and leisurely take one of my favorite walks in Paris that leads me to the Musée d'Orsay, then the Tuileries Garden, where my view is full of lovely architecture and my belly is full of happiness.

Lil A told her parents that she would like to go to Paris in a helicopter. It’s funny and adorable what kids say at that age, but what I really wish for her on her second birthday is that she gets to hang on to that blissfully unguarded spirit, so wonderfully captured in the first photo of today’s entry, for as long as she can.

April 18, 2011