And then it did.  In a way that made my heart swell and my eyes blur.  In a way that is still knocking around my head.  In a way that made me stop dead in my tracks, look around, and wonder: is this place for real?  In a way that made me want to shop in the food markets—to bring a fresh piece of produce up to my nose and inhale deeply; to sample a slim slice from a wedge of sharp cheese; to tear a nub off a freshly-baked baguette before tucking it into the crook of my arm—and to cook, to bake.  In a way that made me long for a stop at a boulangerie to be a part of my everyday, for a sidewalk cafe to call my own.  In a way that made me feel more stylish, more worldly—more in it.

And I felt all of this despite (because of?) the challenge of it all.  I speak approximately 10 words of French and boeuf and bourguignon are two of them.   It was a brand new city to me and the streets surely would’ve twisted me in circles had I not been in the company of someone far more directionally talented than I.  We were coming off a beach vacation in a place where everyone we encountered readily spoke English, where the orders of the day were calm and relaxation.  But Paris, by contrast, was alive and it pushed us.  In a way, I think we need both parts of the trip.  Santorini soothed the parts of us that were worn ragged by the daily grind.  We needed to escape, to get away from it, to stare blankly at an ocean.  But, after that, Paris woke us up and energized us—and we needed that, too.

A highlight of our few days in Paris, unsurprisingly, was the food.  We ate excellent steaks in a bistro full of locals, after nibbling from a tiny bowl of breakfast radishes and sliced charcuterie placed on the table when we were seated, after slurping up the rich broth laying under truffle raviolis, after swabbing up the last bits of a perfectly seasoned salad with a scrap of baguette.  Afterward, that night, we spooned up vanilla ice cream, drenched by booze-soaked baby cherries.  Our walk home, through streets dampened by rain and crowded with people smoking and laughing, felt like a secret glimpse of Paris, seeing the city lit up after dark and come alive.

We spent a morning cobbling together perfect fixings for a picnic—crisp apples from an open-air market, mini loaves from Poilâne, cheese from the dazzling Bon Marché grocery (what I took to be a Paris version of Dean & DeLuca, swollen prices and all), all of which we ate on a bench in the Luxembourg gardens, while sipping rosé.

We ate a casual dinner at a cafe—beef bourguignon for me, beef carpaccio for Kevin.  We sampled gelato from Berthillon and Amorino.  We had granola at Rose Bakery and ate indecent numbers of pastries and drank all colors of wine.  We kept up our appetites by walking.  And walking.  And walking.  We visited the Eiffel Tower twice, once by day and once by night.  We ducked into Notre Dame early one morning and the light and the hush and the beauty made me gasp.  We walked up and down the Seine, across one bridge after the next.  We climbed the stairs to the Sacré Coeur and then descended back down into Montmartre, where we wandered through the  narrow streets.  We cut through Place des Vosges right before the sun set.

Somewhere between these meals and these sights, there were small moments—less significant moments, moments that managed to seem normal, somehow, even though we were so far from home, so obviously foreign.  Quiet, meandering streets that we ended up on by accident.  An hour spent on the balcony outside our hotel room, above the buzz of Rue de Buci, sipping wine and smiling into the sun.  The kind women at the market, who insisted that we pay for our two apples, even though she was in the midst of picking out bags and bags worth of groceries.  Drinks shared with some friends from Chicago, who happened to be in Paris, too.  A concert—Josh Ritter, in Paris!—attended by equal numbers of Parisians and Americans, where we all drank beer and cheered loudly and sang along quietly to one of the encore songs.

So, yes, I’d say that Paris lived up.  And  then some.

More Paris photos here.  And soon, an actual recipe—I promise.