My favorite spots to eat and drink wine in Paris

Save this for your next trip!

I’ve been thinking a lot about what compels a person (or a couple) to decide on a reoccurring vacation spot.

Why that remote island in the Caribbean? Why that cabin in the middle of the woods?

For me, vacations thus far have been one of two things. Either a week or two exploring a new place in the world, doing the tourist thing. Or a visit to the vacation spots that our families have declared for generations. A lake in Minnesota. A beach week by the Cape.

Then we made a return trip to Paris.

Last year, after we finished up our wine road trip through Burgundy and the Rhône, we ended our six-month European jaunt with a weekend in Paris. We did what was expected of us, of course. Picnic by the Eiffel tower. Steak frites at Le Relais de l'Entrecôte. Glasses of wine and plates of cheese wherever we could get our hands on it. Yet by the end of our weekend, my husband said it wasn’t enough.

“We need to come back to Paris,” he said. “And we need to do it properly.”

By “properly” he meant living like true locals—long lunches and luxuriating in parks with books, or apéro for hours at a bistro or bar. A bottle of wine by the Seine on a sunny day. Weekends living like flâneurs, lazy walks through neighborhoods catching the light with our film cameras and seeing where the day takes us. Evenings exploring Paris’ culinary scene outside of the typical bistro—Korean, Turkish, Lebanese. Rotisserie chicken on Sundays.

By the end of our two weeks, it was clear to us that a return trip was necessary. There’s still so much of Paris to dig into, and we feel like we’re only getting started. Will this city be our vacation spot? When do we decide that this place is ours?

I guess we’ll have to see where the wind takes us.