Six Reasons Why Visiting France Is Like Having a Baby

As I alluded to in my last blog, the food in Paris is enough to make one fall in love with the city—and I ate enough to compensate for everyone who has never been. I now understand why people who visit keep coming back. Since I ate enough to produce what I’m referring to as a “food baby,” I will compare the experience of visiting France to giving birth.

1. Excitement. You embark on your trip to France and you’re excited—you’ll be visiting a foreign country! It’s what you’ve been dreaming about and planning for years. You’ve toiled and slaved away to save money and waited for “the right time,” and now it’s upon you. You’re also a little nervous, but mostly excited.
2. Fear. You arrive and realize you don’t speak the language and the signs are in French and announcements are in French and it doesn’t matter if you’ve taken lessons or traveled before, this is the reality: you are incapable and going to be the worst vacationer ever.
3. Suffering. There’s pain, to varying degrees. (Unlike going into labor, the “pain” here likely means you’re ignored or treated badly rather than enduring an orifice ripping open). These were the warnings you’d heard about from others and didn’t want to believe were true. “It won’t be that bad,” you thought. “They must have been doing something wrong.” Now you know they were right. This is going to be the longest trip ever and you just want to cry and go home.
4. Anger. You wish to castrate someone. You loudly voice your displeasure or threaten to revoke all kindness for the rest of your life. NEVER AGAIN.
5. Bliss. The food baby is born. You taste the warm camembert cheese over your balsamic-drizzled salad, the chicken in cream sauce that’s so tender you can cut it with a fork, the ice cream covered in warm chocolate atop a light, flaky pastry, and you think “I’ve never been so happy in all my life.”
6. Amnesia. As soon as you’re home you’ve forgotten all the fear, pain, and anger, and all you want is to go back to France and have another food baby. Despite the fact that it’ll take ages to exercise and diet back into the shape, and you’re in the hole several of hundreds of dollars more than you anticipated,* it was worth it. It’s time to start saving for the next trip.

*High priority concerns after having a food baby, not a real one.

Between then and now, however, is Italy. It looks like I’ll be due for twins.