STORY TIME & Nostalgia: Our Last Night Together in Paris (...Back in 2014)

Hey Au Pairs,

We're sharing a very nostalgic story today which didn't make the cut in the final edits of our book (which is set to be out at the end of the summer!)

If you're coming to the end of your stay as an au pair, you may have experienced this situation recently with your best friend.

Please let us know your stories in the comments, we love reading about those sweet moments when you remember WHY you chose to be an au pair and think THIS is why I moved abroad! 

Let us take you back to 2014, when two au pairs began their evening with the phrase...

“God we know Paris so well. We’re so bored!”

At the time, we were walking around our arrondissement for the third time on a summer evening in June. It was towards the end of our year in Paris and we basically viewed the year as “over.” We had done it all.

We’d been through all the child and host family shit we could handle, we had done all the tourist attractions and finally felt like we had “done Paris.” 

Obviously this was not the case. Flash forward twenty minutes and we were flying down Rue de Rivoli towards the Seine on a velib. I was on the back and Edwina was pedalling as FAST as she could. 

here's Edwina and her bike - thankfully we didn't fall off in Paris.

All the while, we were belting Beyonce at the top of our lungs. We’d stop and walk around random little “rouelles” in the city and end up in interesting new places. 

“Finally, we came to a stop at Place de La Concorde, gazing at the Eiffel Tower sparkling at 11pm on the dot from afar. We ran screaming to the middle of the hugely busy traffic square and laid down in the middle.”

I pulled the picnic blanket sheet that I had in my bag at all times (after having been nearly fully acclimated into the French picnicking culture) and we lay down on our backs on the cold, wet cement covered by a thin blanket and ignored the fact that hundreds of cars were whirling around us. 

I remember blasting some sad, sappy music from my phone as we gazed at the emblem of France in the distance, talking and crying about our final days in Paris together.

We closed our eyes under the blinding lights of Place de la Concorde and nearly fell asleep holding each other for dear life.

It could have been a scene from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. All was going well and we were laughing at yet another successful shenanigan in the city, realizing how stupid we were for thinking we were all “done with Paris”. 

it looked JUST like this scene... but at night

“All was going well until we opened our eyes to a huddle of French police staring down at us, wrapped in our blanket asking: “Qu’est ce que vous faite? Vous êtes sans abri?” Translation: What the fuck are you doing in the middle of this traffic square… are you homeless?” ”

Needless to say we jumped up, packed the blanket back into my bag and called it a night. Moral of the story is that there will always be something to do in Paris. It’s been four years for Edwina coming back and forth from this city and her fave places constantly change. 

Paris is constantly growing and changing so much that there will always, always be something to do and new things happening. So, when you find yourself walking down the street with your bestie, complaining about how much your life sucks… remember 1. your life doesn’t really suck 2. you could always be homeless… 

“Au pairing helps you enjoy all the little things in life (like the fact you can hang out with your new bestie 24/7.)”

au pair friendships are some that last the longest! <3