Some friendships take decades to become the kind you'd change a flight for — and some, it turns out, take ten months. My friends and I spend our time planning extraordinary travel for other people — and yet somehow our best trip yet had almost no plan at all.
The Champ de Mars in August is everything you've ever imagined Paris to be, and somehow still better, with the Eiffel Tower above us and the best charcuterie spread in front of us. We had shopped local. French cheeses, baguettes, a block of butter, fig jam, and the obligatory fruit to make ourselves feel healthy. And of course a bottle of Champagne de Venoge I had carried from Épernay the day before. An hour into catching up, a man walked through the grass selling chilled champagne. We looked at each other, and, well…obviously we bought it. I have no idea how long we were on the lawn, but we still remember it as our first adventure together abroad.
What makes it even better is that ten months earlier, we were strangers. Three travel advisors who met at an industry event in Nashville — and not even a year later, we’re on a trip to Paris together. One of us was planning a trip to France…and I of course had to tag along. Our third friend was in Scandinavia and changed her trip mid-adventure, rerouting her flight home through Paris. Because…of course.
The truth is, we recreated Nashville instinctively, but we just happened to be in Paris. At home, we're always chasing the best rooms, the latest wine bars, the restaurant soft openings worth attending. In Paris, we simply arrived and did what we always do. We visited Bar Hemingway at the Ritz, ordered a €39 cocktail with a single white rose resting on the rim — how much is a Euro, anyway? — and were met with a tower of bar snacks, a Parisian ritual we quickly learned to anticipate and photograph.
We ate crêpes in Montmartre, found the Greek-turned-French restaurant in Saint-Germain with the best Beef Bourguignon anyone had ever tasted. We ate escargot, had breakfasts of baguettes and pain au chocolat with zero protein. We saw the twinkling lights of the Eiffel Tower from an evening cruise down the Seine. We were greeted by a personal shopper (and champagne of course) at Louis Vuitton in the Triangle d’Or. La Galerie Dior alone was worth the trip. It was all perfectly us, and perfectly French.
They say you learn who someone is when you travel with them. What nobody tells you is how quickly that can happen — how three days in the right city with the right people can feel like years of knowing someone. The best friendships, like the best trips, don't always need a long runway. Sometimes you just need a loose plan, a good bottle of champagne, and the willingness to say yes to wherever the plane takes you.
For the three of us, Morocco is already on the calendar. Because…of course it is.
“We recreated Nashville instinctively — we just happened to be in Paris.”
“Sometimes you just need a loose plan, a good bottle of champagne, and the willingness to say yes.”