CWT Journal – September 6, 2026 | Paris

Today we simply stepped outside and explored Enfants-Rouges on foot, quickly finding ourselves inside the Marché des Enfants Rouges, a neighborhood institution dating to 1615 and the oldest covered market in Paris. Its peculiar name—“Market of the Red Children”—derives from a nearby 16th-century orphanage whose children wore red uniforms.

We ambled through aisles overflowing with produce, flowers, magnificent cuts of beef, raw oysters and sea urchins, and an eclectic mélange of prepared foods from around the world. But perhaps more memorable than the food was the atmosphere: an effortless, convivial joie de vivre we've encountered seemingly around every corner in Paris. People weren't merely eating lunch; they were lingering, conversing, drinking, laughing, and making an afternoon of it.

Eventually Mom and the girls departed to prepare for afternoon tea, while Dad commandeered a stool and a chicken-kebab sandwich. Before long, another wonderfully polyglot conversation materialized with the owners and neighboring patrons, bouncing between languages wherever common vocabulary could be found.

It reminded Dad of his late-night Uber ride home from the hospital in Avignon a month earlier, when a French driver and an American passenger somehow cobbled together a conversation from English, French, Spanish, Russian, and even Latin.

There is something wonderfully democratizing about language: fluency is useful, but sometimes curiosity, a few shared words, and a willingness to look ridiculous are sufficient.

Perhaps joie de vivre isn't something the French merely say. In Paris, it feels like something they practice.