Mother & daughter trip

I was in Paris with our oldest daughter last week. She started learning French on Duolingo a few years back. I wanted to give her an extra push and promised I would take her to Paris if she practiced every day for at least a year.

She’s now on day thousand-and-something and switched to Japanese after 2 years of French. I’m not sure if I should tell her this won’t earn her a trip to Tokyo.

Paris however is only 4 hours away, so when the Covid situation seemed to allow it at the beginning of December I booked us a train and Airbnb.

Two weeks later the Netherlands went into another lockdown because of the Omicron variant. Luckily, the only measure France took was having us wear a mask at all times. Surely this would have been a sticking point for me a year ago, but in 2022, I’ll gladly take it. The boys back home made sure we were well taken care of.

We hopped on a train and went shopping! I got myself this graphic memoir by Parisian artist Pénélope Bagieu.

I don’t think this book is translated yet, it only came out in November last year. I imagine it will hit the American book shelves soon enough because her other books are sold all over. It’s her first autobiographical graphic novel and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s funny while touching on themes as loss, rejection, being brave and growing up.

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A few years ago, I decided to stop buying new clothes (apart from socks and underwear) because it’s a fun, cheap and impactful¹ way to help the save the planet.

It wasn’t hard to find a thrift store in LA, and in the United States there’s always ThredUp. I’ve missed having all those options but Paris more than made up for that.

Here’s what I found:

Don’t worry, we also saw everything you should see on a first visit, from the Eiffel Tower to the Sacré Coeur, and discovered the Notre Dame now has a wall of comics in front!

Roughly 7300 minutes of French lessons didn’t do much, I think it’s safe to promise her a trip to Tokyo once she can translate a Manga for me.

I hope you enjoyed these comics in your inbox. If you did, please tell a friend!

With love,

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1. Fashion accounts for around 10% of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.