Cocktails and Cafe Terraces: A Return to the City I Once Called Home

Every year when my birthday rolls around, I feel an overwhelming urge to spend it in Paris. I only lived there for a year, yet the city has left an Eiffel-Tower-sized imprint on my heart. 

As an au pair, I was lucky enough to make incredible friends who shared the same love for the city. Conveniently for me, many of those friends found French boyfriends and are still living there three years later – meaning I now have every excuse to keep returning. 

One of my happiest birthdays was spent in Paris in 2023, when my parents came to stay for the weekend. We were complete gluttons, devouring the city one éclair at a time. One evening after drinks, my dad – ever the gentleman – offered to scoot me home on a rented electric scooter (back when they still existed in Paris). The two of us somehow squeezed onto one and sped through the rues back to my chambre de bonne, laughing uncontrollably the entire way.  

I’m an incredibly nostalgic person, and these are the memories I hold closest.

One of my best friends from Paris now also lives in London, and her birthday falls just one day before mine. So when I sent the simple text, “Should we go to Paris for our birthday weekend?”, the decision was immediate. Suddenly we were counting down the weeks, sending each other increasingly excited messages every few days: “I’m just soooo excited!” 

Soon enough, two more of our closest friends were enlisted, and the four of us booked an Airbnb near Gare du Nord for a weekend dedicated entirely to fun. 

Perhaps anyone who has once called Paris home feels the same way, but when I return now, I’m far less interested in the tourist landmarks. Instead, I crave the simple habits that made the city feel like ours: €5 happy hour cocktails in dimly lit bars, sitting along the Seine with a baguette, or lingering for hours on café terraces with nowhere else to be. 

Having arrived at 10 am, we had the entire day stretching ahead of us and, after eating said baguette by the Seine, we decided to challenge ourselves to walk back to our Airbnb without using Google Maps – just to see if we “still had it.” To our delight (and relief), we did. 

Only this time being back, we were no longer surviving on measly au pair salaries, which made the joy of splurging on a truly incredible dinner feel all the more special. 

In true “we-used-to-live-here” fashion, we hadn’t booked anywhere for our first night’s dinner. Feeling overly relaxed, we simply wandered into a restaurant near our Airbnb after reading the glowing Google reviews. Thankfully, the reviews did not lie. 

You know a restaurant is good when you immediately want to order everything on the menu. We shared endless plates between us: Les Jardins de César, delicate ravioles de Royan, onglet de boeuf with échalote compote and pepper sauce, golden frites, beautiful seasonal asparagus, and – naturally – a bottle of crisp white wine. 

The wine inevitably led to cocktails at Le Cornichon, where I ordered a cucumber margarita topped with sprinkles, before we continued the evening with Aperol spritzes on yet another terrace and eventually ended up dancing at Café Cerise.

The next morning, my friend Lara and I went for a run along Canal Saint-Martin. Back when we lived in Paris, we were part of a running club called Pretend Parisiens, and we used to run this exact route together every week. There was something sweet about retracing those same steps three years later, as though a version of myself still existed there somewhere along the canal. 

We met our friends afterwards for brunch at Résidence Kann, a Scandinavian café flooded with sunlight. One of our friends had recently returned from Copenhagen and become obsessed with simple Nordic breakfasts, so we ordered boiled eggs, rye bread, Comté cheese, and giant café au laits, laughing our way through brunch while recounting the previous night’s antics. 

From there, we wandered through a sprawling vide-grenier in the 10th arrondissement, where one friend bought an outrageously beautiful yellow leather bag despite the obvious logistical issue of hand luggage restrictions. 

Later that afternoon, we headed towards Le Marais and, guided as always by food, somehow found ourselves near Arts et Métiers surrounded by some of the city’s best Asian restaurants. Every menu tempted us, but we eventually settled on Yansai. 

It was exactly my kind of place: Vietnamese bun bo, Japanese karaage don, bao buns, spring rolls – all my favorite foods gathered under one roof. 

Naturally, dessert was required. 

After seeing it repeatedly on Instagram, two of my friends were desperate to visit Folderol for their famous combination of natural wine and ice cream. On the walk there we drifted in and out of vintage shops and, as always, I made my mandatory pilgrimage to Merci – in my opinion, the best concept store in Paris.  

Ironically, I first visited Folderol on my 22nd birthday, before it became viral online – something the aggressively placed “NO TIKTOKS” signs outside now seem determined to remind people of. 

My friends ordered ice cream with glasses of white wine, while I chose apricot and thyme ice cream paired with rosé. As tradition dictates, we sat on the pavement outside eating our melting scoops, trying not to look too obviously delighted despite the entirely aesthetic scene around us. 

On the walk back to the apartment, we stumbled upon a group of musicians performing beside the canal. They looked impossibly beautiful, like they had wandered straight off the set of Daisy Jones & The Six. Completely enchanted, we sat listening as the evening slowly disappeared around us. At one point, we jokingly discussed abandoning our London lives entirely, joining their band, and becoming beautiful Parisian bohemians together. 

Back near the apartment, we picked up bags of Brets crisps – goat’s cheese flavor will always be my favorite – along with cured meats and cheese for a little apéro chez nous. Of all the French habits I’ve brought home with me, the art of the apéro may be the one I treasure most. 

That evening, we gathered an even bigger group of friends and headed, unsurprisingly, back to a café terrace for drinks. We returned to an old favorite, Le Napoléon, in buzzing Strasbourg-Saint-Denis, before ending the night dancing at Les Étoiles. 

I had forgotten just how good Paris nightlife can be. Every terrace overflowed onto the pavements, each bar was packed, and the whole city hummed with energy late into the night. We ended the evening exactly as all good nights should end – eating kebabs in bed, watching TV, and laughing about the night we’d just had. I remember turning to my friends over and over again and saying, “I feel so lucky” – because I truly did. 

On our final day, the heavens opened. Rain lashed against the windows in almost biblical fashion, ruining our plans to spend the afternoon flâner-ing around Montmartre.

On the walk there, one of my friends suddenly exclaimed in sheer panic that she still hadn’t eaten a pain au chocolat aux amandes – something we insisted on eating every time she visited me in Paris. Naturally, our first stop became the nearest boulangerie. Every time I eat one, I’m still amazed by just how outrageously delicious they are. 

Afterwards, we took shelter inside Crêperie Brocéliande with hot chocolates and crêpes – because surely all indulgences are justified in Paris – our flip-flops and tiny skirts revealing just how optimistic we had been while packing. 

That evening, wanting to make the most of being reunited with friends in the same city once again, we hosted dinner back at the apartment. I adore supermarkets abroad, and French supermarkets are a particular joy. We picked up Toulouse sausages, fresh vegetables from the local greengrocer, plenty of crisps, and cooked a giant pasta together while reminiscing about our old Paris lives and creating new memories all over again. 

Then suddenly it was Monday morning, and we were boarding an early Eurostar back to London in time for work. How lucky we are to live close enough to return to the city we once called home.