Bonjour! J’espère que tu as passé un bon weekend.  Hello everybody! Hope you had a wonderful weekend and a relaxing 4th of July week.  I had an amazing 4th of July week.  My daughter Sri and I spent it in beautiful Paris! A one week holiday in Paris to see beautiful art and practice yoga. Does this sound too good to be true?

My daughter Sri goes to our local YogaSource studio four times a week and is a big yoga fan! When the studio announced back in March that they were organizing a Yoga, Art, Paris holiday for studio clients, Sri was beyond THRILLED! This was her email to me

“Omg!!!!  Mom come to Paris with me, I think it would be so much fun!”

Can you believe Sri had to convince me to come along? CONVINCE ME! Was I crazy to even hesitate? Hesitate I did for two months until one day I decided to just do it! Hitesh graciously agreed to watch the twins and shuffle them to work and summer classes and be Mr. Mom for the week, while Sri and I went on this once in a lifetime yoga and art-inspired holiday.

I thought a lot about how to best describe this amazing holiday, Should I go day by day and explain what we did? Or maybe I should combine all the activities into one blog? Or break it down into individual blogs of all the wonderful places we visited? But in the end I think the best way to share our Parisian holiday is to break it into three blogs – Our stay; Museums;  and Cafes, Patisseries and boutiques. Let me start by sharing a few photos of our stay at our hotel, the streets we strolled on, and the cool sights we stumbled upon.

Our hotel in Vendôme

We chose to stay in an area called Van Dome so we could be close to major museums, shopping, and restaurants.  The Louvre Museum, The Tuileries Garden, Musee d’Orsay, luxury brand shopping, and renowned Parisian patisseries and restaurants were all walking distance from our hotel.

Our very Parisian room 😀. Think Disney movie Ratatouille and the little apartment that Linguini stayed in 😀.  Our room was that small.  After we created a fuss and insisted the hotel switch our room to something bigger we ended up with the room you see here.

After settling into our slightly bigger room, we went downstairs to the gorgeous outdoor cafe at the hotel and toasted to the start of a memorable art-inspired holiday in Paris.

Sunrise in Paris. The view from our room at 5am.

The days are looooong in Paris! Sunrise at 5am and sunset at 10PM!  This is the view at 9:45pm.

Starting the day with yoga

What better way to start the day in Paris than with yoga to relax the mind and get our body all nimble and free to explore the city. Linda, the owner of Yoga Source and our yoga teacher had rented a dance studio for the week where we met every morning at 9:30am for our 1-hour yoga session.  After yoga we all went back to our hotels to get ready before meeting up again at 11:30am at a different art museum every day.  Sarah was our art historian and art tour-guide who did an awesome job describing not just the paintings but also the history of the era, the political climate, and background on the artists. Sarah and Linda were both amazing!!

Where do I begin to even describe this perfect, relaxing, fun, art-inspired holiday in Paris? There are so many art museums, cafes, charming neighborhoods, shopping, boutiques, patisseries, historical sites, and so much more to explore in this beautiful city that one needs at least a week to truly enjoy a relaxing and stress-free holiday here.

Normally the weather is quite hot in July with temperatures in the 90s, but we got lucky! The entire week we were there the tempeatures were in the mid 70s and 80s with a cool breeze, we really couldn’t have asked for better weather.  As the locals kept reminding us “You are fortunate, the weather has been great this week. It’s usally much hotter.”

Haute Couture week in Paris

One of the twins Rani texted us to tell us that it was Haute Couture week in Paris and to look out for celebrities. We didn’t see any celebrities but we did catch a model photo shoot outside our hotel.

The World Cup quarter finals

The World Cup quarter finals was happening while we were in Paris. France was playing Uruguay. It was cool to walk past watch parties on the streets and at local cafes on our way to the metro station. France won 2 – 0.

Luxury goods shopping in Paris

Sri came with a plan to go shopping as she had found out from a friend that some luxury goods are upto 30% cheaper in Paris as compared to back home. When you include the 13% tax that gets reimbursed at the airport, that’s a huge discount.

Sri’s shopping spree. 

Moonlight in Paris

On one of the nights the moon was so bright it woke me up. And I had to take a picture.

Yoga, Art, Paris. A Mother Daughter Summer Holiday 💐

Sri is an artist and I am just a big art lover. We both love art.  What better place to appreciate art than in one of the most beautiful places in the world – Paris.  This is one amazing holiday that Sri and I will cherish forever. We made one last toast on our last night to a memorable Yoga, Art, Paris tour 🍾.

Thank you Sri for convincing me to come along on this very special art-themed Parisian holiday 😘😍💐!!

Bonne journée!
Have a great day! 

Next post:  The art museums of Paris.