OUR BLOG

Thoughts
&
Musings

Haley Delzani Haley Delzani

Our Styled Adventure: France

We landed in Paris late on Tuesday evening. Everywhere has been an adventure, but Paris really kept the ball rolling! We flew into BVA (Beauvais), which is about an hour outside the city. (The things you learn when you travel: Pay more for a closer airport.) Anyway ...

We landed in Paris late on Tuesday evening. Everywhere has been an adventure, but Paris really kept the ball rolling! We flew into BVA (Beauvais), which is about an hour outside the city. (The things you learn when you travel: Pay more for a closer airport.) Anyway ...

We landed, everything was closed, and it was pouring down rain. We ended up spending an insane amount of money on a cab to Paris, but who cares, right? We are running wild and free. An hour later, we arrived in the Latin Quarter, which is where our super-cute flat with a terrace was located; we got ourselves settled in and passed out.

It was probably our longest night of sleep yet ... and heavenly might I add. Maggie went off on the first day and spent some time with family who was in town. They went to breakfast, on a Segway tour, to lunch and shopping, and then, we all met for dinner. (We really like food. Can you tell yet?)

Emily and I went walking around the city, we needed to get a few things for our styled shoot the next day and wanted to acclimate ourselves with the area. We found literally the cutest flower shop ever, with only the greatest florist ever: Au-delà Des Prés. Anne Leroy was the florist’s name. The cutest. We loved working with her so much we worked with her again, but I'll save that for the next post!!

 

So on our way we went with a floral plan in hand. We then went to get our nails done and stopped in some of the many Paris shops. We had lunch and then went to see the Eiffel Tower. It really is so extraordinary and beautiful to see in person. And then ... are you ready for it? We took a scooter ride with Ayman, our newly dubbed French boyfriend.

We had so much fun on the ride, we asked if he was available for full-day-ish tours, and he said, “Yes!!” Oui oui, we scheduled that for Saturday. What’s better than to see all of Paris in an open-air scooter??

In the mean time, we had a pretty wild, not-exactly-planned trip to take for our styled shoot. Picture taking nothing with you but your tools needed for your part of the job and a travel toothbrush, then taking a train to Nice and deciding it was best to sleep over so we didn't have to rush the sunlight. That meant we had to find a place to sleep (thank God for Airbnb) and that we had no other clothes ... What the hey, right?? It's really an adventure. We also decided that we might as well take a train from Nice to Aix-en-Provence the day after our styled shoot to explore more of the south of France before we returned to Paris.

As for Nice ... AMAZING! Everyone needs to go there once in there lifetime. Holy tomatoes, is it beautiful!

The styled shoot was ... um? ... to die for. Here are some sneak peeks.

After the styled shoot, it was time for bed as we had a really early train to Aix-en-Provence ... or so we thought anyway. Let's just say we missed the first train, but not because it had actually left the station before we got there, but because we were looking for a gate that didn't exist. (Turns out it was the word and in French.) Listen, I think we have established that we’re cute but not necessarily the smartest crayons. Eventually, we made our next train and decided the best way to explore was to rent a car, which we did for the afternoon.

Amazing. Beautiful. Incredible. ADD IT TO YOUR LIST. Also, learn as much French as possible because they really don't speak any English. (Google has an amazing translator you can use on your phone though.)

We had a train scheduled for that evening back to Paris, so it was time to return the car and head to the train station, except that other plans were made for us — at least for a while. There was a bomb threat/scare at the station. They evacuated and had to go through the whole rigamarole, but can we talk about how terrifying that is when they can barely speak English, and you barely speak French, so you really don't know what's going on?? Just people saying bomb, explosion over and over, and then you watch the bomb squad roll up in their gear with the robot camera. Suddenly you think, “What distance do I need to be away from this station to be safe?” Eventually they were able to establish that it was just someone who forgot their luggage (how does that happen??), but thank you, God, we were safely on our way back to Paris.

I'm pretty sure that was enough adventure for all of us. We were ready for sleep and to relax. Our trip is nearing the end, and before we know it, back to the real world we go!!

In gratitude and peace ... xoxo,

H  

Never miss a post by subscribing to our blog!

 

Read More