I had the pleasure of taking a weekend trip to Paris last weekend. My sister was visiting her friends – who are spending a year in France – for the week. I was able to broker a deal (with my fabulous husband) and arranged a rendezvous with my sis across the Atlantic.

Because I was traveling, I didn’t have a chance to do my normal 30-minute workouts. I made up for it, however, by logging tens of thousands of steps during my weekend of sight-seeing (and chowing and cocktailing) through the “City of Lights.”

We hit the museums pretty hard, strolled through gardens and churches and crossed the Seine a couple of times. I averaged 13,834 steps a day over the 3-day period with a high of 17, 090 steps on Saturday! Of course, all that walking was interspersed with breaks for chocolate croissant, crepes and apple cider, gnocchi blanketed with shaved black truffle, baguette and WINE! I have no regrets about these splurges. If you ask me, steps are steps no matter how many rich, yummy things you indulge in in between them!

Another bonus: There were flowers and green things everywhere! Parisians love their flowers – real flowers, paintings of flowers, potted plants that teeter on small balconies, and gardens big and small. This was my second time in Paris, but the first time I really tuned into how floral-centric the city is. The story of the garden that inspired Claude Monet’s famed Water Lilies paintings, on display at the Musee de L’Orangerie, seems indicative of the relationship many French have with planting and nurturing green things: that it’s an ongoing, even life-long, pursuit that teaches and rewards in unexpected ways. I also loved the beautiful Renoir paintings of floral arrangements (also on display at the L’Orangerie).

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After a day touring museums (don’t get me started on the Louvre!), we stopped past the flower shop in our friends’ neighborhood. And what a flower shop it was. Sherbet-colored baby’s breath fluffy hydrangeas and array of tulips, ranunculus and roses in white. The perfectly visual end to an amazingly visually stimulating day. Heaven!

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Overall, it was such a fun quick trip. So happy that I went and had a mini girls weekend with my sister. Feeling blessed that I got to log the steps in an amazing place and have a taste of Parisian life!