Travel Tales

Young Chang

Melinda Seely, her daughter and her granddaughter saw a different side

of Paris last December.

They played in the playgrounds, visited the oldest toy store in the

city, drank hot chocolate at a cafe famous for the creamy treat and

visited a children’s museum.

“We saw and went to only things that were child-friendly,” said Seely,

a Newport Beach resident. “We didn’t try to see museums, we didn’t try to

see the great landmarks other than the Eiffel Tower.”

The two adults on the trip had visited the must-see sights before.

Susan Seely, Melinda’s daughter, had studied at the University of Paris,

Sorbonne for a semester during college and got to know the city well. And

Melinda Seely had visited Paris on numerous earlier occasions.

So last December, the group decided to cater everything to 3-year-old

Emma Seely-Katz.

“We just thought now would be an opportune time to expose her to a

country where people speak a different language, it’s a different

culture,” said Susan Seely of Balboa Island.

The men were left behind. Since Susan Seely reached her teens, she and

her mom have made it somewhat of a tradition to take mother-daughter

trips. As Susan Seely was six months pregnant at the time of the Paris

trip, the family decided sooner would be better than later to travel

abroad.

“She really wanted to go to Paris because it was convenient in that we

both knew what to expect there,” Melinda Seely said. “It wasn’t as if we

had to learn all about it.”

Emma especially loved the Eiffel Tower, which she and her family had

read about before leaving the U.S. She communicated to her mother and

grandmother that she wanted to go there first, immediately upon arriving

in France. The trio took the elevator to the top and looked down on the

city from the observation deck.

“It’s hard to put that kind of reaction into words,” Susan Seely said,

laughing. “But she was just very excited.”The oldest toy store in Paris

was called Au Nain Blu and located near a big Ferris wheel. Emma, with

her own camera, took photos from her lofty vantage point.

The playground tour included the Place de Vosges and the Luxembourg

Gardens. The kid-friendly museum was called the Cite des Enfants.

“It was kind of neat because it showed me how families in Paris are,”

Susan Seely, 35, said. “I never needed to pay attention to any of that

before.”

And while the family rode (on the bus or Metro) right past the Musee

d’Orsee, the Arc de Triomphe and the famous Sacre Couer, they ventured

inside Angelina’s, a cafe known for its hot chocolate.

“Hot chocolate for two comprised of a largish pitcher of the richest

imaginable chocolate, two cups and sauces and an additional bowl of

lightly sweetened whipped cream,” Melinda Seely wrote in an e-mail.

Susan Seely said her favorite part of the trip was watching Emma

react.

“I wasn’t sitting in a bistro, sipping red wine or coffee and

reading,” she said. “It showed me a whole different side of Paris.”

* Have you, or someone you know, gone on an interesting vacation

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Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627; e-mail young.chang@latimes.com; or fax to

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