Mending While Blending: France 2025 - Day One (May 31-June1)

We were up early on Saturday to start our journey to France. This was going to be a much different trip than we had on our honeymoon in 2018. That trip had us spending most of our time in Paris, with a 2 night side trip to Lourdes. Our itinerary was June 1-2 in Paris, June 3-4 in Mont. St-Michel, June 5-6 in Lisieux, June 7-8 in Nevers, and June 9-10 in Paris. We took four planes, seven trains, six subways, six Ubers, one charity ride (Lisieux), one bus, and we took 155,198 steps, accounting for nearly 75.8 miles. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that hundred, if not thousands, of stairs too.

Leaving Las Vegas, I mean Phoenix

Some goodies to get us through a 5 hour layover

Our Dreamliner awaits us

Let's go

That Premium Economy upgrade was so worth it

Kick the tires, and light the fires

We chose to fly on WestJet, which turned out to be a really nice airline. The downside was we had a five-hour layover in Calgary, making our travel from Phoenix to Paris 18 hours. We arrived in Paris at 11:00 local time, gathered our bags and made our way to the first hotel. Our goal was to make it to at least 07:00PM before going to bed for the night. We dropped off our bags and made our way out for a quick tour of the Latin Quarter.

Outside the Hotel Grand des Balcons, Paris

Business sign on Blvd. St. Michel

We wandered into St. Severin and took in the beauty of a church that was originally constructed in 1230, and reconstructed in the 1500's due to a fire. I remember this church from our first trip in 2018 as they had some beautiful icons and paintings. St Severin the Hermit was a 6th-century monastic who was north in the late 5th century in France. He dedicated his life to prayer and solitude as a hermit on the banks of the Seine. He was the spiritual mentor to many, including Saint Cloud (Clodoald), the grandson of the first Catholic King of France, Clovis I.

Entrance of Theotokos Into Temple

Oh Mother, hurry to our rescue

Icon of Theotokos

Side Altar of St. Anne

St. Genevieve of Paris and my Genevieve

Close-up of St. Genevieve

The Root of Jesse

Beautiful Altar and Wife at St, Severin

We left St. Severin to walk over to Notre Dame de Paris. The line to get in was crazy long and all of the skip the line passes were exhausted. We decided to make Notre Dame a Monday morning activity and focus on getting some food. We ate at a sidewalk cafe overlooking Notre Dame and planned out our Monday morning.

After eating, we took a stroll around the Ile-de-Cite, taking in the reconstruction efforts at Notre Dame. I'm not a construction guy but it looks like months or years of work still left to do on the outside. We ended up walking over to the Luxembourg Gardens, which was packed with locals enjoying their Sunday evening. We found a church, St. Jacques Du Haut Pas, that had an evening Sunday Mass. The church is named after St. James the Lesser, first Bishop of Jerusalem, and cousin of Jesus. The church was completed in the 17th century and was looted and pillaged during the French Revolution. There was a plaque in the church that commerated several priests and faithful martyred by the Godless French Revolutionists. In 1793, St Jacque was one of 15 Catholic Churches in Paris that were allowed to re-open.

First views of Notre Dame

The first of many Italian dishes for us

Lots of work left to do

Stroll along the Seine

Beautiful roses near Notre Dame

Finally, an empty street

Resting in the Jardin du Luxembourg

One our way to Mass

A cute four-legged Parisian.

We walked over to Mass and were treated to a beautiful liturgy, albeit, one done in French. We had a fun moment when the priest approached us to do one of the Scripture readings. We told him that we didn't speak French, he smiled and said he didn't speak English. That would have been fun to go up to the ambo and try my rusty French language skills. We left Mass and found a pizzeria, with a great patio and view of the Latin quarter. The pizza was great, as was the wine.