"If we lived here," John said as we sat in our new favorite wine bar with our maybe fourth glass of wine , "we'd be so well known."

"Honey, we are already well known and we live in another country," I replied with my last sip.

And so ended our first weekend in Paris as we walked back to our hotel with yet the remnants of more ice cream on our hands. We have a whole additional week and two days ahead of us, and one of my best friends joins us at the end of the week.  Since it was Sunday and most places were closed, we spent the entire afternoon in the Louvre. If you think it's difficult keeping track of John in IKEA, then just wait til you are in a museum the size of the entire state of Texas. We did, however, have a plan. Knowing what we wanted to see, we mapped out  somewhat plan of attack. I let him wander in the great salons while I listened to facts via the audio tour. I mainly wanted to see Winged Victory again, and I always enjoy the Greek and Roman statues. At one point, he even made a joke about one of the art pieces, which was a shock because if you remember from last summer, art is a serious business with him. Wandering around the salons, we could feel our mothers with us. John's would be examining all the paintings and mine would be listening to the audio tour and making sure I was within her site at all times. This city brings back so many memories for us, it feels like it has wrapped our memories like Christmas presents and we open them when it' just the right time. Finally, we stopped and took the obligatory picture of the Mona Lisa to take for our friends back in San Antonio, and decided it was time to depart. We had reached almost 10K steps along walking around.

We were in desperate need of coffee, so following our usual walk and discover approach, we found a cute little cafe in the left bank. No need to worry about my husband's dietary restrictions here! Coffee with milk? The vanilla flan with cream? Pick an item, we can order it. As we made our way back to our hotel we found ourselves in another one of our favorite neighborhoods - Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Since it's summer, the cafes and restaurants, with their tables and chairs out on the sidewalks and doors wide open, all look different from their winter visages. We hardly recognized one that we had visited in December as we imbibed on a mid-afternoon cocktail. (And, I take it back, Paris can make a delicious cocktail. The Espresso martini was the perfect pick me up).

There's still so much shopping to do, and we made mental notes on which shops to come back to later in the week. For dinner, we decided on a cafe we went to on our last full day here in January. John didn't remember it right way and I told him that was because he was probably still in sticker shock on our purchase of the Notre Dame painting.

Who don't seek out the high end restaurants here, wine and charcuterie are never a bad choice. Unlike sitting in our sweaters and away from the cold wind of the doors, this time we sat on the end of the restaurant's open doors looking out at the city. I could live in the part of the city. After all, this section of the arrondissement doesn't know us. Yet.