• About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms
  • Unsubscribe
No Result
View All Result
Live and Invest Overseas
FREE REPORT
BEST PLACES TO RETIRE
*No spam: We will NEVER give your email address to anyone else.
  • HOME
  • COUNTRIES
    • Top Destinations
      • Portugal
      • Panama
      • Belize
      • France
      • Colombia
      • Dominican Republic
      • Thailand
      • Mexico
      • Spain
      • Argentina
    • Browse All Countries
    • Best For
      • Retire Overseas Index
      • Health Care
      • Cost of Living
      • Investing in Real Estate
      • Editor’s Picks For Retirement
      • Establishing Residency
      • Starting an Online Business
      • Single Women
      • Playing Golf
  • BUDGETS
    • Super Cheap ($)
      • Cuenca, Ecuador
      • Chiang Mai, Thailand
      • The Philippines
      • Las Tablas, Panama
      • Granada, Nicaragua
    • Cheap ($$)
      • Algarve, Portugal
      • Medellin, Colombia
      • Boquete, Panama
      • Carcassone, France
      • Buenos Aires, Argentina
    • Affordable ($$$)
      • Abruzzo, Italy
      • Barcelona, Spain
      • Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
      • Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
      • Costa de Oro, Uruguay
    • Luxury On A Budget ($$$$)
      • Ambergris Caye, Belize
      • Paris, France
      • Panama City Beach Area
  • Real Estate
  • ARCHIVES
    • Living & Retiring Overseas
    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
    • Offshore Diversification
    • Our Latest On Coronavirus ⚠️
  • Making Money
    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing
  • CONFERENCES
  • BOOKSTORE
Live and Invest Overseas
  • HOME
  • COUNTRIES
    • Top Destinations
      • Portugal
      • Panama
      • Belize
      • France
      • Colombia
      • Dominican Republic
      • Thailand
      • Mexico
      • Spain
      • Argentina
    • Browse All Countries
    • Best For
      • Retire Overseas Index
      • Health Care
      • Cost of Living
      • Investing in Real Estate
      • Editor’s Picks For Retirement
      • Establishing Residency
      • Starting an Online Business
      • Single Women
      • Playing Golf
  • BUDGETS
    • Super Cheap ($)
      • Cuenca, Ecuador
      • Chiang Mai, Thailand
      • The Philippines
      • Las Tablas, Panama
      • Granada, Nicaragua
    • Cheap ($$)
      • Algarve, Portugal
      • Medellin, Colombia
      • Boquete, Panama
      • Carcassone, France
      • Buenos Aires, Argentina
    • Affordable ($$$)
      • Abruzzo, Italy
      • Barcelona, Spain
      • Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
      • Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
      • Costa de Oro, Uruguay
    • Luxury On A Budget ($$$$)
      • Ambergris Caye, Belize
      • Paris, France
      • Panama City Beach Area
  • Real Estate
  • ARCHIVES
    • Living & Retiring Overseas
    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
    • Offshore Diversification
    • Our Latest On Coronavirus ⚠️
  • Making Money
    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing
  • CONFERENCES
  • BOOKSTORE
No Result
View All Result
Live and Invest Overseas
No Result
View All Result

Why Life In Paris Keeps Me Coming Back For More

With Trump In Paris This Bastille Day

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Jul 14, 2017
in France, Lifestyle, Travel
0
Fireworks light up the Eiffel Tower at night
224
SHARES
3k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

The streets of central Paris were silent and still this morning until well past the usual rush hour of a workday morning… with not a tourist in sight even here in the city’s historic heart at the height of the holiday season.

Our apartment was silent and still, too, long past our normal stirring hour. Like the rest of this city, Lief and Jackson were taking advantage of the holiday to enjoy an extended night’s sleep.

Then, about 9 a.m., I heard the drums and the trumpets of Bastille Day as the parade passed nearby our street.

The main event Bastille Day military procession is traveling down the Champs-Élysées as I write, as it has this day nearly every July 14 since 1880, headed for the Place de la Concorde.

Soldiers march in the bastille day parade
The Bastille Day Parade marching towards the Arc de Triomphe

Among the parade’s participants this year is U.S. President Donald Trump, who accepted French President Emmanuel Macron’s invitation to come to Paris this Quatorze Juillet to help commemorate the 100th anniversary of America’s entry into the First World War alongside the French.

Passing over our neighborhood one by one on the way to the show are more than 50 fighter planes and helicopters. A roaring whooossshhh rattles our 300-year-old foundations as each flies by.

Last night, President and Mrs. Trump dined with President and Mrs. Macron. The power couples enjoyed caviar and lobster at the Michelin-starred Jules Verne restaurant located on the Eiffel Tower’s second floor. This morning they stood together at Place de la Concorde to oversee the parade scene.

Tonight’s festivities will focus on the Champ de Mars, the gardens that stretch between the Eiffel Tower and the École Militaire. The historic green space will be like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Lief and I will be nowhere around, but young Jackson says he and friends are planning to brave the crowd.

Instead, Lief and I are thinking that we’ll make the trip across town to Montmartre to take in the show from an elevated (and we hope less riotous) position.

Montmartre, the highest point in Paris, is a popular spot with lively plazas at the base of the Sacre Coeur Basilica

It’s chilly and gray this morning, as it has been all week. Feels more like autumn than midsummer, but we don’t mind. We appreciate Paris in any season.

This summer, as you know, marks our official repositioning to this city. From here on out, we’ll be coming and going from Charles de Gaulle airport.

“If you were lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man,” wrote Ernest Hemingway, “it stays with you the rest of your life, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

I was lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a younger woman with two small children. I have carried the memories of that time with me these nine years since…

Memories of walking Jackson, ages 4 through 8, to school every morning, in all weather, rain and a few times snow, some winter mornings pre-dawn, both of us enjoying every step, playing word games in English and in French, pointing out new window displays, waving to our corner butcher and neighborhood grocer and cheeseman, who’d sometimes offer us free bites of Camembert or Brie…

Memories of standing on the corner of Rue du Bac and the Boulevard St. Germain in December holding Jackson’s hand as he and I would linger to look up and down the “grand boulevard,” as he called it, lit up for the season, tiny white lights strung in every tree and around every shopfront…

Memories of making the trek with both children each November from our apartment along the Seine to Rue St. Paul in the 4th and the shop known as Thanksgiving for the supplies to prepare our annual feast as Americans in Paris…

Sunday afternoons at the W.H. Smith bookstore on Rue de Rivoli shopping for books in English… of Saturdays in the Tuileries gardens, sailing boats in the fountains in spring, riding the Ferris wheel at the carnival in summer, and watching Jackson run through great piles of fallen leaves come fall…

Fresh, warm crepes with nutella are a favorite Paris treat

Crepes with Nutella, picnics in the Luxembourg Gardens, Jackson learning to ride a bicycle on the cobblestones of our courtyard…

The children struggling to learn French… and our daughter’s first French boyfriend who had a lot to do with Kaitlin finally overcoming the language hurdle…

The four of us cramped into an apartment that is one-fifth the size of the house we’d moved from in Ireland, four Americans learning to downsize on the fly because four people in 112 square meters doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room…

Ah, those were the days.

No, wait… those are the days. I now find myself lucky enough to be returning to Paris!

Time to go make some new Paris memories.

Happy Bastille Day.

Kathleen Peddicord

 

Comments

Tags: bastille day parisbastille day paris 2017children parisexpats parisfestivals franceLife In Parislive and invest france conferencesliving parisproperty values parisrentals paristravel paristrump in paris
Share97Tweet53
Previous Post

Why Occitanie (Formerly Known as Languedoc) Is Perfect For This Gay Expat Couple In France

Next Post

The 16 Best (And Worst) Things About Life In France

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

Related Posts

Beautiful caribbean sight with turquoise water in Caye Caulker island, Belize.
Belize

My Trip To Belize And Experiencing Its Many Cultures

by Marie Peay
January 21, 2021
0

From the southern coastal district of Punta Gorda to the northern coastal town of Corozal, there's a lot to see...

Read more
Panama City Skyline from Cinta Costera Park, Panama City, Panama.

How Panama Became A Great Economic Success Story

January 19, 2021
Refreshing Cocktail at beach in Belize.

10 Reasons To Reinvent Your Life In Beautiful Belize And 9 Challenges

January 17, 2021
Burns Avenue in San Ignacio, Belize 350x250

Cayo, Belize, Is A Great Escape For Expats

January 13, 2021
Perfect tropical paradise beach with palm trees and hammock 350x250

Most Frequently Asked (And Not So Crazy) Questions About Retiring Overseas

January 10, 2021
Keel-billed Toucan, shot in Panama.

The 10 Best Places To Discover Wildlife In Panama

January 7, 2021
Family watching sunrise on beach.

Moving Overseas Will Affect Your Family But It Can Be For The Better

January 5, 2021
Next Post
cars paris

The 16 Best (And Worst) Things About Life In France

A world full of fun, adventure, and profit awaits! Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and we'll send you a FREE report on the 10 Best Places To Retire In Style Overseas Today.

Start Your New Life Today, Overseas

how to retire overseas

LIOS Resources


  • New To LIOS
  • Ask An Expert
  • Media Center
  • Contact Us
  • FAQs

Quick Links


  • Best Places To Live
  • Best Places To Retire
  • Finding A Job Overseas
  • Real Estate

Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and get your FREE report: The 10 Best Places To Retire Overseas In 2021

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms
  • Unsubscribe

© 2008-2021 - Live and Invest Overseas - All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Countries
  • Budgets
  • Archives
  • News
  • Events
  • Bookstore
  • Newsletters
  • About Us
  • Members Area
  • Contact Us

© 2008-2021 - Live and Invest Overseas - All Rights Reserved.

WANT TO RETIRE OVERSEAS?

Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and we’ll immediately send you a free report on the 10 BEST PLACES TO RETIRE in style overseas. Each day you’ll learn about the best opportunities for international living, retiring overseas, offshore diversification and asset protection, and investing in real estate around the world.

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.