Copenhagen
One last good morning from Copenhagen! Perhaps you're thankful that I will change my breakfast venue! I admit, I fell into repetition with all that I ate in the morning. As at the farmhouse, breakfasts are an anchor for my day. If you wear a smart watch, you know how it asks you to start the day with a meditative moment? Yeah! At my morning meal.
I come back again to the question of happiness. (I often come back to this in Ocean. The perceptive reader will have figured out that these posts are, in fact, about finding happiness. And here I am now, finishing my week among "happy" people.)
It isn't hard to figure out why Danes are closer to contentedness than most of the rest of us on this planet. Community. Safety. Diminished worry. It's a combination of economics and culture. An understanding that you're not in it just for yourself: you bike with others in mind so that you can be safe yourself. You contribute, so that if you are sick, you never have to see a bill. You play together, you live for your connection to others. It's all so obvious! One (safe) midnight walk to my hotel was enough to let this sink in.
Danes appear to me to be reserved but friendly. I dont know that it takes as long to fit in here as it does say in France or Italy, where a generation will pass before you're one of them. In Copenhagen, so much of the forward looking design, cuisine, architecture is aided and assisted by the presence of outsiders. Yesterday's chef at the Mexican place was a woman of Mexican heritage, but born in Chicago (and trained for a while at Noma). I hear this kind of stuff all the time: when I went out for a coffee that first afternoon in the young family's neighborhood, the barrister addressed me in English even though I had said not a work. I asked her -- now how did you know?
Know what?
That I was English? American? Is it something I'm wearing?
She laughed. No, you could be Danish! It's just that I don't speak that language. Only English.
I know that I do look Danish/Dutch/German. In France, I never speak English to the locals so they always have to guess where I am from and those three nationalities are always, always, always the ones that are thrown on the table.
So here, being from elsewhere is okay.
How nice. How utterly nice to feel safe and accepted and cared for. Happy indeed.
[I know I know I know. Simple formulas are never as simple as you make them out to be. Nonetheless, I do believe that rugged individualism, which Ed, for instance, does defend for all the innovation that it generates, comes with that heavy price tag of self promotion. And it spills and trickles and before long you realize that being kind has somehow fallen by the wayside. How often do we acknowledge that wanting more for yourself inevitably means that you may be taking something away from someone else?]
So I leave my lovely corner room at the Villa Copenhagen...
... and I go to the airport and there I meet up with the young family. We are all traveling to Paris together.
Paris
We arrive in Paris ahead of schedule and just ahead of a big storm system that will drench the city with showers and thundershowers on and off for the next 24 hours.
(disembarking at CDG airport)
Paris. How many times have I been here with my younger daughter! As a little girl, walking in her black ballet flats ahead of us, somehow sensing even at age 5 that this city requires extra care with presentation. As a college student, braving with me winter storms that unexpectedly hit the city and cut us off from returning home. As a young adult, with her husband and now as a mom with her two kids. I watch my life unfold through trips with her here!
Shockingly, we are not staying at my favorite Paris hotel. They messed up the reservation and though I know we all make mistakes, and I am forgiving, and I will be back there this fall and forever more, for this trip I booked this rather complicated set of rooms and instructions elsewhere. An upgrade really, which is okay for that rare trip I get to take with this wonderful foursome.
So, we are staying at Hotel d'Aubusson, which is just a five minute walk from my regular old Baume. Toward the river, so arguably even more central to all that we need in Paris to make us happy.
They have two adjoining rooms, I have my own little one elsewhere.
(we find treats in the rooms: macarons! and balloons for the kids! champagne for the grownups!)
The weather does dictate this day and the next one. I'm so happy that this afternoon's storms hold off so that we can fit in a walk to the park! But it is hot!
(leaving the hotel: matching sandals!)
(To the park!)
(always with the dazzling flowers...)
(a walkers' paradise...)
(But did I mention that it was hot? 91F/33C and humid...)
We eat dinner at the wonderful Breizh Cafe, which I know you have seen here many a time, especially on all those first nights in Paris!
I'm not sure buckwheat crepes are the crepes of choice for kids, but these do a credible job of eating them, especially since it continues to be toasty warm. A French eatery isn't going to pass up a chance to fling open the windows for that sense of eating en plain air. Even when it's 91F outside! There is no great love for air conditioning in Northern Europe.
The kids had lots of activity today and no naps to speak of, so the young family retires after dinner. I extend my walk just a little. To the river, where people spill out on the banks for just a smidgen of a cool breeze.
(hello, Eiffel Tower...)
We are not in this city for long. There's only so much vacationing a working couple can do. We're not the French after all, with their remarkably long vacations and summers of leisure. Still, the few days that we have here already feel special. We've been promising Primrose (named after the primroses that bloomed in the Luxembourg Gardens on the day she was born) a trip to the city with the Eiffel Tower for three years now and finally, we are here.
Tomorrow, we will try to fit in some walks, avoiding the rains and thunder clouds and heat as best as we can. In Paris, you are never supposed to care about the weather. We will see if that holds true!
Bonne nuit!
With so much amour!
