July 2026 Recap

My daughter and I went to France on a girls trip to celebrate my 50th birthday and I'm sharing our Paris and Nice adventures! Along with what I've eaten, read, and accomplished this summer!

This is my phone screensaver photo now ❤️

It’s time for a monthly recap. The last one I did was for April 2026 because it was a big month. I had Mom’s Weekend at my daughter’s university, then moved her out of her dorm, and brought her back for the summer which has been truly the BEST having her home. It feels like just yesterday but it’s been 3 months.

And June/July were also big months so I am documenting the highlights. Grab a cup of coffee or your favorite beverage because this is a long one!

I turned 50 in June. I was going to do a big post about my feelings and reflections on turning 50, how I’ve grown, how my life saving surgery changed my perspective on life, but my birthday fell days after two back-to-back work trips including Walt Disney World and then to Charleston, and I just didn’t have time to really reflect.

Although I did just write this post about how I am healthier at 50 than I was at 45, and if the truth be told, I am more fit now than I was at 40…or maybe ever! At the bottom of this post I get into some of my fitness milestones.

But first, let’s talk about France! I am documenting this trip with my 19 year old daughter here so that I have the memories to look back on.

Because in 36 hours we are leaving to drive her and her possessions back to college in Utah to start sophomore year. So I need to look at these photos probably more than you do! It’s a tough, tough time on moms to leave our babies at college out of state. 🥹 I did this before but it’s still awful.

Paris For A Belated Birthday Trip

My daughter and I have been to Paris many times together the past few years including last summer. We’ve done all the name brand tourist activities - the Louvre, D’Orsay, going up the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, river cruise on the Seine, Luxembourg Gardens, the Tuileries, etc.

It's hard NOT to pass by famous things in Paris just walking around to and from and exploring.

So this trip, in honor of turning 50 in June (I recently wrote about how things are different for me) I wanted NOTHING on our agenda that felt like pressure!

No big tours, no lining up in the 100F heat in a long dress with covered knees and shoulders to go inside a church or fighting crowds into a museum…nope. My birthday gift was not doing that to us!

It was also a trip from a Monday to the following Tuesday, but given that the flight alone from LAX to Paris is 13.5 hours, there’s a significant amount of time lost due to sheer travel (23 hours door to door from San Diego to central Paris because that CDG to central Paris taxi was 2 HOURS, welcome to summer in Paris). So I didn’t want to over-plan and over-commit us!

Macaron Making Class

I only put two things on our entire agenda in Paris and the first was an Emily in Paris-themed macaron making class. It was a 3 hours class in the afternoon and it was “air conditioned” but if you know Europe, you know that their definition of AC is very different than in the US. Nevertheless, it helped us get into 80-85F temps rather than 100F like it was outside.

France and most of Europe were in a heatwave, as they are every summer lately during June-August. 95-100F (38-40C), and there’s very little air conditioning. This why no AC is another topic, a rabbit hole to go down. Google it, but the consensus is it’s expensive, people fear AC for their health and that it’s bad for you (yep), and bad for the environment. So in the meantime, hundreds if not thousands of people in Europe die from the extreme heat during the summer. Another topic, not my wheelhouse. Let’s get back to macarons! 🍪

Our 'Emily in Paris' themed macaron making class. It was SO cute and while I realize everyone is milking Emily anything to the max, it was still cute and festive. Ironically, my daughter has never watched the show but I have. One of the very few shows I watch!

Making macarons is quite an intricate process and there are lots of steps along the way where things can fail from ingredient selection to technique to the actual baking and temperature regulation.

I asked our instructor if French people actually make these?? And she said no! She said French people buy them and if they want to make a dessert, they make something much simpler like a cake. I want to be French then.

While it was very interesting learning about how to make them, and always great when I walked into everything prepped and measured, I would never embark on the project of trying to make macarons at home in California.

The first, last, and only time I ever previously tried to make them my daughter was 2 and she’s nearly 20 now. So I took an 18 year break. It was interesting to learn from our instructor (a professionally trained chef and pastry chef and restaurant owner) where things could go wrong and what to do and not do. But back in my own kitchen, I don’t love macarons enough to try to master them!

I also asked her if she thinks that the age of the egg whites matters because I have read “tips” that suggest that old eggs for macarons are better but she said it doesn’t matter.

The reason they’re purple is that she had us make a vanilla filling and a lavender infused filling, hence the purple color she had us tint them. I am not the biggest fan of lavender in food so I preferred the vanilla.

It was fun, interesting, a great way to spend 3 hours indoors at the peak heat of the day, but I do not have a future as a French pastry chef!

After our class we were hungry! We found our way to a Mexican-inspired restaurant. Why Mexican? Because for me personally, French cafe food in all the cafes that you walk by is very one-note and lacks veggies, spice, or something that feels “fresh”. A chicken caesar with breaded chicken is the closest to fresh you can hope to come in any of the casual cafes, but when I saw someone eating Mexican, we said ok there’s some freshness and fiber there so we stopped. The pervious day I had gotten a salmon poke bowl at another cafe.

I am not linking them because nothing was good enough to recommend, if I am being honest. It was fine in the moment but not memorable. 100F really kills appetites and desire for anything like a big heavy burger or a bowl of French onion soup! I also don’t like day-drinking at peak afternoon heat so I drank Coke Zero rather than champagne.

My body craves vegetables so much when I travel! We get a ton of steps in every single day so don't feel bad at all about a KK.

Perfume Making Class

The second of only two activities I had planned for us was a perfume making class! Our instructor explained to us how to use a combination of up to 10-12 different essential scents ranging from cola to bergamot to vanilla to orange and everything in between to create our own 100ml bottle of perfume to take home with us.

This was also a good activity to do in the heat of the day because it was held slightly underground (about 10 steps into a ‘basement’ type setup) so it was inherently cooler, but definitely not cool.

We learned about how certain scents are teasers are the initial burst of what you smell when you first spray a perfume, some last a few hours, and then others last for many hours 8+. Our instructor made it very easy and it was overall fun.

My only complaint was that the four people sitting at our wheel of scents were not good at sharing. They need to go back to kindergarten and learn how to share with their neighbors.

They would hog the wheel and spin it without regard for us. Kind of like shopping on a spinning rack at a department store - one should be mindful of others also attempting to shop and not just whip the merchandise without some consideration for others. But these people were happily (purposefully?) oblivious which made it trickier than it needed to be to smell, jot down notes, and then re-encounter the scents we initially were drawn to, smell again, and make sure we loved it enough to have it in our perfume. There were 110 scents to choose from and we needed every minute of our 2 hour class!

My tip if you do this class or any other perfume making class, is that if you have an inkling when you’re choosing your tour times that one class may be less full than another, choose the less full one! This is an activity that depends on group sharing of bottles and the less people there are, the better IMO. Whereas with macarons, it doesn’t matter - everyone has their own bowl and spatula and ingredients and you’re not sharing really ever.

Our perfume making class was so informative! Neither of us love our perfumes that we made now that we are back home with them. Not sure how that's possible, but I am going back in September with my husband to try again!

Crepes For the Win

Favorite crepes are at Creperie Saint Germain which is across the street from the famous Cafe Les Deux Magots (easiest way to landmark it). Nutella, strawberries, and chantilly, every time.

Mother Daughter Time Was The Best!

It was 100F in the shade after our perfume making class. We were so hot!

Our last night in Paris. We had given up on makeup by this point given the heat especially and wore the lightest weight clothes we had.

Always Awe Inspiring: The Eiffel Tower

I'm always reminded how huge it is when I'm in front of it. And how it's literally tons and tons of metal! It seems romantic at night from afar with lights. But during the day, you can really appreciate how much metal there really is!

Our last morning we had a few hours before our literal 22-24 hour journey back to California so we went on a walk to the Champ de Mars in front of the Eiffel Tower. It was Bastille Day morning which is their July 4th, but all the revelry had happened the night before so we got lucky and it was pretty quiet. I think maybe people nursing some hangovers! The fireworks and celebrations were going off late into the night.

Nice, France (Côte d'Azur)

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