Cheryl Shops

It feels slightly surreal to be writing this mere hours after Trump announced a month-long travel ban to Europe, considering I just returned from a weeklong vacation to London and Paris on Saturday. While our friends in London were good-naturedly indulging in gallows humor (and stocking up on toilet paper), things in both places generally felt like life as usual. Granted, our flight home was less than half full, and in retrospect, some things were definitely a bit emptier than normal (but more on that later). That said, we had a wonderful time and are glad we went, regardless of when we'll be able to return. Here's how we spent two days in Paris, just as the Coronavirus began to spread.

I went to London and Paris last week for my birthday, a trip I’d been planning for months. And while no one expects a global pandemic, it was a bit bizarre to be so far away from home while all of the latest Coronavirus developments were unfolding. That said, it felt like business as usual in both cities (which have been pretty unaffected thus far), which was reassuring; we were able to enjoy our vacation, albeit with a little more hand-washing than usual (although that’s never a bad thing, especially while traveling). I’ll be posting my travel diaries over the next few weeks, but in the meantime, here’s what I wore in Paris.

I first traveled to Paris when I was 13 years old—I participated in an exchange program in middle school—and while I've been incredibly lucky to travel all over the world since then, Paris remains my favorite city in the world. I'll take any chance I can get to visit it, even if it's only for a day or two. This was my fourth time visiting the city of lights, and while it was definitely a whirlwind, it was totally worth it. We only had 48 hours there, but we covered a lot of ground. Here's what we did.

Paris is probably the most stylish city in the world, and it's my favorite for people-watching (it's my favorite for a lot of things, but I'll cover that in another post). I know it's a cliché, but the women—and the men—are just so incredibly chic. This may be because Paris is a global fashion center, but probably more because dressing well is a culturally ingrained behavior. In other words, French women are just innately stylish. There's no way you can compete, but there is a way to blend in, and that's dressing in such a way that feels, as the French say, bien dans son peau—good in your skin. So I wore something that made me feel pulled together, confident, and like myself, and it was a reminder that I should always dress that way. Maybe I should go to Paris more often!