A heatwave and a dose of homesickness

Hard to believe that it's only the fourth time this decade that I set foot in France, and just the second since acquiring my nationality three years ago now. I know it's the just a marketing slogan combined with the fatigue for travel across nine time zones, but I still nearly tear up seeing the signs Bienvenue : Paris n'attendait plus que vous upon my arrival at the airport. (Welcome: Paris was only waiting for you.) One sweltering commuter train ride later, I emerged into the shadow of Notre Dame, which couldn't but draw out a smile despite the sleepless journey. After a couple gleeful selfies, I dragged my bags down the Seine to Caféothèque for a couple of rounds of caffeine until my Airbnb allowed me the luxury of a shower and a change of clothes. Refreshed, I spent a couple hours touring the city (and even discovering Fragonard's latest take on a fig scent!) before Nico's train brought him down from Lille after his week-long business trip. Together we picnicked along the Seine and dined on a terrace like proper Parisians, enjoying the sunlight that stretched well past 10pm.

I've missed this all dearly. Am I allowed to feel most at home in a place where my accent betrays me as someone who doesn't belong, even if I now hold a passport that says I'm one of them? But Hemingway himself said that for those lucky enough to live in Paris as young adults, it stays with them. And I can't disagree. The following day, my Word Daily vocab word was very on point: 

My daily vocab lesson email gave me the word for the feeling of the day as I bid Paris adieu.

We raced the sun out of bed the next morning to make our train out of Paris to the next chapter of our summer vacation: a weekend in the Drome region with Nicolas's sister, brother-in-law, their kiddos, an extra niece, and his mom. While there isn't terribly much to do in that part of the country, we did spend some time exploring one man's fever-dream-turned-30-year-passion-project, the Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval. Beyond that, it was mostly family time in the midst of a brutal heatwave, in a country where air conditioning is a controversial concept. Such conditions hardly leave folks on their best behavior, but all except the smallest of us managed reasonably well.

Family time in the Drome visiting the Angkor-Wat-styled Palais Idéal du Facteur de Cheval

After family time, the next stop was Corsica, uncharted territory for the both of us. But first, the journey there: we wound up splurging last-minute for a private room on our ferry from the south coast of France after an unexpected 4-hour train delay left us less than 8 hours between our Airbnb check-in and check-out in Toulon. A day of naps and drinks with a view were the perfect recovery from the aching heat of the prior days, but hardly helped with the jetlag. We rolled into our Corsican Airbnb shortly before sundown to begin the tropical leg of our week abroad.

Eating, napping, sipping drinks, and enjoying the views on the 8-hour ferry ride from Toulon on the south coast to Ile Rousse in northwest Corsica

We'd booked ourselves 3.5 days in Corsica (gotta love the American vacation standards - the French measure their stays in weeks, not days) but we'd only pre-planned the first of said days: Bastille Day on the water, touring the Scandola nature reserve, which is only accessible by boat. Bright and early, beating the morning heat, we headed down to the port from our perch up in the Haute Ville of Calvi, the old fortified citadel. We loaded up into a small boat with just a handful of other tourists for a six-hour adventure that didn't disappoint. We saw eagles, mountain goats, Corsican cows lounging on the beach, and a whole lot of stunning volcanic formations. The water was even beautiful enough for Nico (infamously anti-swimming) to not only dive in but to also coax me to follow when the temperatures didn't feel quite to my liking.

Touring the Scandola nature reserve

Bastille Day went out with much more of a whimper than a bang, despite the fireworks, delayed as they were to allow the locals to watch the disastrous World Cup semi-final match in which Spain knocked France out 2-0. As the internet said, much respect to the French for their commitment to never working on a holiday.

Calvi, a small and not-overly-touristed city in northwest Corsica that we used as our home base

Our own personal travel agent, Google Gemini, advised us that the next best thing to do in northwest Corsica was hiking, and so much of it. But for unseasoned hikers in the midst of a sweltering heatwave, we had to temper it. We spent the better part of the next day strolling along the Fango River and then jumping (or shimmying) our way into the water. Some more enterprising fellow hikers brought waterproof backpacks along, and just let the water do the latter half of their hikes for them. I may have been just a wee bit envious.

I did my best to be a sport on our day of gentle hiking in the midst of a brutal heatwave

Try as I might to be a sport of it, a day of hiking (in this heat) was really all I had in me. In the interest of catering more to his urbanite wife, Nico planned out our Thursday in Bastia, the nearby fishermen's village of Erbalunga, and the Patrimonio wine country. What can I say? Fine dining with the charm of a little town where everyone's grown up together is my happy space, and Bastia's Radiche was the highlight of my time in Corsica, down to the liquor listings which included the categories of spirits, whiskeys, dessert wines, and "stuff from our friend Charles". I went in for the latter and got some homemade myrtle berry liquor, which wound up being on the house because of course it was. I'm not terribly proud to wander through one of the most stunning natural regions in France and still gravitate to the most city-dweller of activities, but luckily no one in France will ever shame you for being a "foodie" - I don't even think they have a term for that, since that is simply part of being a French(wo)man.

Yes, our meal at the restaurant Radiche in Bastia merited its own collage

There were other things to see (and drink) in Bastia, Erbalunga, and the Patrimonio wine region, though none perhaps quite as memorable as that lunch in Radiche.

As American vacations are wont to do, this one wrapped up entirely too quickly. Soon enough it was Friday, and we packed our bags to check out from our Airbnb. In the few remaining hours before our flight, Nico drove us through the hills to visit a collection of idyllic villages, where we stopped to wander and get in my steps. Everything was beautiful and it would have been lovely to stay longer (and ideally crank the temperature down 5 to 10 degrees Celsius).

Corsican mountain-top villages certainly have their charm

Last stop: back to the City of Lights for a final chill weekend. For the first time since we've been living abroad, we had to fend for ourselves this time when it came to housing. Nico's dad had been kindly putting us up in his spare home in Paris all these years, but he'd sold it right after our last trip out for the Olympics. Having to shell out sent us to a decidedly less central neighborhood than we'd previously been spoiled with. We stayed in a distinctive neighborhood near Montmartre, whether the crowds didn't really do bedtimes much before sun up. Luckily my jetlag and the diphenhydramine were carrying me through the nights, but I'm not sure Nico could report the same. We went to a film, our fourth time in twelve years actually going to the cinema, and the first time in Paris. Not too shabby either: we went to the Grand Rex, the only French theater showing Christopher Nolan's Odyssey in its original 70 mm format (not that I'm sure I really noticed the difference - shh). We window shopped, ate, wandered, and sipped the weekend away. We caught up with Nico's friends over drinks, a picnic, and the World Cup final.

Paris, je t'aime

On our second departure from Paris (certainly too many for just one week abroad), we actually did beat out the sun. The city felt intimately ours as we wandered through the silent aftermath of the previous night's World Cup celebrations and the first beams of light stretched out across the city well before she'd awoken. We made it safely to the airport with wiggle room for our 8:40am boarding time. I'm thrilled to report that we're already booked to return in November, and the big return home for good cannot come soon enough (though that much isn't scheduled for this year). To paraphrase Hemingway, I was lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young woman, and now wherever I go, it stays with me. But I cannot wait to see the day that Paris doesn't have to stay with me, tucked in my heart, because I will be staying with it, at home once more in the City of Lights.

Future babies' first road trip

Our future babies are setting off on their first road trip today: our top six embryos are being transported (on an overnight adventure!) down from Oakland to San Diego, site of the clinic that will be responsible for our future embryo transfers. Future mom (hopefully) isn't nervous at all. Call me as soon as you get there, kids! Or the embryo equivalent: there won't be any live shipment tracking available, so I'm counting on the transportation company or our agency (hardly known for their organization or communication) to actually remember to confirm successful arrival tomorrow afternoon ("or the next day, as soon as we're able") - no stress, especially given that the day after their arrival will be the start of a three-day holiday weekend. Surely no one will accidentally forget to send confirmation and leave me stressing, alone in a puddle of anxiety, with Nico flying off to Paris on Saturday. Yep, everything's cool. I'm going to be a cool mom. 100%.

Update: they made it!

With news just before the holiday weekend!

Signed, sealed, soon to be delivered

We’re finally, finally making some progress on our non-traditional journey to parenthood! After four failed matches, we have a medically cleared gestational carrier with whom we just finalized our contract. On Friday, Nico and I signed and notarized it. Today, the date for delivery of our embryos to the clinic that will do the transfers was just scheduled. (The saga that became the collapse of communication between the clinic that created our embryos and the agency sourcing our gestational carriers could merit a whole post of its own, but you know what? It’s not worth the time it’d take to type out. Suffice it to say another clinic is still playing nice with our agency, and they’re willing to take the baton.) The delays have been brutal. I remember last fall when I thought our January trip to Hawaii might be our babymoon. Or maybe the Olympics in February. Ha. (On the plus side, this has been giving me the chance to vest more Neuralink stock before our lives turn upside down.)

Things are starting to maybe sort of just a little bit feel real. But there are still so many steps to go that I’m too far away to stress about preparing for a baby. Right now, I’m still anxious whether we’ll ever reach that step. But I’m at least pleased to report that, more than ten months since we began the matching process, we seem to be getting somewhere. Sort of. Maybe.

Catalina: Cute, but no Porquerolles

In January, the BBC published an article on US parks only accessible by boat or seaplane. Among the list was the Channel Islands, not so terribly far away off the coast of Los Angeles. It sounded like the perfect long weekend, a great extra box to check off in the category of American adventures before we put a bow on our time in the States. Back then, we didn't anticipate that we wouldn't have a single weekend when the two of us would be at home and not traveling for business after the month when those travel plans were made. So here we were, making a rapid turn-around as I unpacked my bags from my most recent week down in Austin only to refill them with gear for the weekend.

Catalina was cute, and also pricey. After getting hit with a $30 price tag for a pair of ice cream cones right after we got off the boat, we started paying a little more attention to our wallets over the weekend. There was still enough to see and do without breaking the bank, though my calves had a few things to say about said low cost (and high elevation change) activities. We found that the 60s Fahrenheit hits far different under the Southern California sun than it does up in the San Francisco Bay. We didn't spot a single one of the legendary bison descended from the pack of 14 brought over for a silent film a century ago, one that didn't even feature them in the final edit. We tried our hands at a round of mini golf, I ate some fantastic lobster roll at the aptly named Lobster Trap, and we somehow didn't find the time to get Nico an authentic straw hat at Luau Larry's.

After a few months of weekly work-related travels, some SoCal voyaging just for us!

The island was cute, but with more tourists and fewer vineyards than its Mediterranean counterpart, Porquerolles. I'm glad we did it, even if it was hardly a chance to catch up on the sleep debt I've been accruing over several months of hopping back and forth between Austin and the Bay. We even made the most of the airport delays with a surprisingly pleasant discovery of a Hefe-Weissbier from the world's oldest continually operated brewery, Weihenstephan. It was lovely to simply have the chance to enjoy a few uninterrupted days in each other's company before either of jobs sent us jetting off once more.

Neurarunners do Bay to Breakers

After somehow going over seven years in the San Francisco Bay Area without once doing Bay to Breakers, I've done a total about-face and, just one year after my first run, captained my very own team this year. After sparkling my way through last year's adventure as the neuron rep in a team of microbes, I knew I had to bring this nonsense to the Neuralink run club. A year later, the raccoon/wizards team gave a fabulous nod to OG Neuralink lore, both to our history early days as a raccoon farm and to Tim Urban's Wait But Why article that first introduced our technological ambitions to the world, describing it as a "wizard hat."

The Neurarunners repped as raccoons and/or wizards

We were a solid crew of Bay to Breakers newbies, my whole single prior run somehow making me an expert. After a chaotic morning assembly around the Ferry Building (but honestly, are you doing Bay to Breakers right if it's any less than chaotic?), we gathered, tossed pitas, revelled in the collective surprises from the creativity of various costumes (or lack thereof), and then scattered as soon as we crossed the starting line. (I'm not sure the whole team got the memo that Bay to Breakers isn't to be run for time.) I tagged along with the speed demons until the top of Hayes Hill, only to lose sight of their sparkling capes when I paused for a congratulatory selfie. After a mile or two of solo running, I salmon'ed my way back upstream until I caught the mid-speed runners, Amanda and (non-Neuralink honorary team member) Israel, whose team I'd joined last year for my first stab at the event. We jogged and laughed and danced our way through the latter half of the course at a much more reasonable speed, though I still somehow entirely missed the human car washes. We crossed the finish line hand-in-hand, earned ourselves some comically green bananas, and finally whittled our group down to the final four who made it out for beers and Chicago deep dish in Hayes Valley before I frantically made a mad (and unplanned) dash back over the Bay Bridge to grab my forgotten suitcase before speeding back through the city towards SFO and another week down in Austin. The Neuralink fun never ends.

The raccoons and/or wizards of Neuralink did Bay to Breakers in sparkling style.

Here's to Neuralink's first (and perhaps not last) appearance at this San Francisco classic.

Ready for a change

Now on my ninth week of the year working down in Texas (out of only sixteen weeks in 2026!), I'm practically a resident. After all my weekends popping back over to Cali, it was Nico's turn to fly to me for a change. And it was more than that: as we start envisioning our return-to-Europe timeline, a pitstop in Texas for the tax breaks when selling some stock has its appeal. Pair that with the warmth of the Texas-based Neuralink team and it really seems time for a change. Nico's job went fully remote last fall, so we're one real estate deal and a U-Haul truck away from some very big life updates. But first, we had to get a little taste of non-work-time Texas. After several folks recommended Eeyore's birthday, an annual picnic and party in a park with very hippie/circus/Burner vibes, we set our date for an Austin preview weekend.

Kicking off our weekend with dinner at Lazarus Brewing and a Spurs game at Chalmer's, where I got to taste a (frozen) dirty Shirley, the drink of choice of my new favorite heroine, Princess Donut of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, a set of books I've been absolutely devouring.

In the end, Eeyore's was fairly anti-climactic: the light breeze that was blowing across town was stifled in the park, making the temperatures unbearable for a pair of Texas noobs. After a quick round and a selfie with the birthday boy, we continued our adventures onward. Saturday's highlight wound up being the beer and wine festival at the German-Texan Heritage Society, where I got a most fabulous fascinator and Nico reveled in the tourist brochure that highlighted on its final page, as a deal clincher on life in Germany, that it was "just across the border from France!" - he's not wrong, the French would never reciprocate if they produced a similar brochure. Properly libated, we made it over to Congress Ave Bridge in time for the nightly emergence of the bats, one of my favorite quirks of this city. Austin has the largest urban bat population in North America, and it seems they all decided to move in under the same bridge. Apparently they do wonders in managing the local insect population. And they emerge each evening in these lovely snakelike cloud formations at twilight, drawing crowds daily.

Saturday in Austin: Eeyore's Birthday, a swing past the capitol, Maifest at the German-Texan Heritage Society, and bats!

On Sunday, we made it over to Barton Springs, a charming natural body of water that's home to an endangered species of salamander. You can somehow find yourself hugged in by trees as you float in the springs while still enjoying views across the Austin skyline: my perfect version of urban nature. Kids and adults of all ages were relaxing together in the water, the chill of which was very welcome in the Texas heat. I hadn't realized just how very much I've missed summers after 8 years out in the Bay Area. Swimming, floating, and twisting around in the water to escape the heat brought me back to some of my favorite childhood experiences, some I hope we'll get to share with our kids if and when this gestational carrier adventure finally takes off. I looked around and could definitely feel myself calling this place home.

Sunday in Austin: Austin Rotisserie to sample the "French roots with Austin flare" whose catering thrills the folks in my office, a dip in Barton Springs, and a tour along the Colorado River with some neighborhood shopping.

From there, we wandered along the Colorado River and did a bit of neighborhood shopping. I was amazed how walkable the city center was: we never once had to call an uber. If our journey back to Europe allows us some time in Austin, I think we'd be targeting a home in the Holly or Riverside neighborhoods just along the riverfront. There were so many fun bars and restaurants; we could count ourselves among the adorably enthusiastic crowds gathering nightly for the bats; a simple stroll out our front door could take us down to the Colorado River path where I've been enjoying runs for the past couple months.

How can I not have a soft spot for a city this covered in art?

The city seems quirky, welcoming, a place for people at all stages of life. In short, it's a place we could belong, a place to be happy for a time.

Restaurant Weeks 2026

Oakland and Berkeley Restaurant Weeks snuck up on us this year. I hardly get a day and a half per week in California since our return from Italy, in which time I do my best to catch up on all my non-work life from circus classes to friends to basic chores around the home. We nearly missed Oakland's entirely, squeezing in just one Rockridge destination: Forge. American comfort food with absolutely American portion sizes. It was fine enough but not some place we need to hit up again.

American comfort food at Forge, Oakland Restaurant Week 2026

We were more prepared for Berkeley’s Restaurant Week a couple weeks later, having devoted some of my airport wait time to doing homework on the dining selections. We squeezed in two restaurants and even a featured coffee shop.

Berkeley Restaurant Week 2026: Anja's with Nico, Michelle, Brian, and Sven! Featuring a lovely rose garden; buckwheat pancakes with pepper, carrot, asparagus, beans, berries, mint, and coconut (??); and breakfast beer!

Berkeley Restaurant Week 2026: Trumer Pils. Because beer isn't only a breakfast beverage.

The highlight was easily Anja’s, a German brunch restaurant (breakfast beer optional) with an absolutely charming rose garden outdoor dining area. Trumer Pils Brewery was also a delight. And Roaming Bean Coffee on the Berkeley Marina was worth the bike ride, even if Nico and his glasses may have had differing opinions.

A rainy ride over to Roaming Bean for Restaurant Week coffees.

For someone who hardly even calls the East Bay home anymore, I feel I did Restaurant Weeks right. And now I’ve got a new, affordable, and mildly boozy brunch destination to add to our weekend agendas.