Everyone who visits Paris has their list of must-do activities. The standards include going up the Eiffel Tower, viewing the Mona Lisa, seeing the Arc de Triomphe, and having a grand love affair with a beautiful Parisian. But I’ve already done those…so this is my recently concocted, must-experience-before-I-leave list…

1. Write at a fabulous cafe in a different arrondissement every day of an entire week
2. Watch the sun rise on the Seine
3. Have a metro make-out moment (should no suitable participant present himself, a faked version will be accepted)
4. Do a photoshoot in my hood
5. Go to the Louvre one more time
6. Spend a sultry night at a real jazz club (where they actually play jazz music)
7. See the fountain show at Versailles
8. Find the best street musician in Paris and give him/her 20 euro
9. Go to a speakeasy
10. Do a friend-filled photo op at Palais Royale
11. Fall in love
12. Wander around Bois de Vincennes
13. Join a writer’s club meeting
14. Eat frog’s legs
15. Dance in the rain on a cobblestone road
16. Stroll along the promenade des plantes
17. Visit Cemetiere du Pere Lechaise
18. Go to that place in the famous old movie where the actress sticks her hand in the mouth of a wall statue and her amour pretends it bites it off. Is that Paris? Oh yeah, and stick my hand in its mouth.
19. Wander the streets for 12 straight hours with no agenda
20. Drink a really expensive bottle of wine out of plastic glasses
21. Put a lock on the Pont des Arts as an expression of the love that is all around us, every day, if only we take a moment to let it in
22. Do a 20 arrondissement pub crawl
23. Learn to speak French (hahahaha!)
24. Figure out what to do with all those wine corks I’ve been saving for 3 years
25. Give my kitties a perfect Parisian day – tartare for dinner, cuddles on the couch, and a perch on the windowsill looking down on the world
26. Find a pair of shoes I love, and then actually buy them
27. Rent paddleboats in Enghien les Bains or those kayaks on the canal
28. Buy a beautiful piece of original art from a street artist
29. Be quarantined by the French CDC*
30. Chase down a mugger*
31. Get detained by the French police as a suspect in a bank robbery*
32. Leave it all here

* There is a real possibility these items were not participated in optionally…