In retrospect, the carbo-loading may have been overkill. We were cutting an equilateral triangle through the French countryside, eighteen kilometers on each leg, for a total of just over 30 miles. I had toast, oatmeal, and cereal for breakfast, topped off with a croissant for good measure. Much to our dismay, there were no tandem bikes of the ilk displayed prominently on the tourism board’s promotional brochure, so we made our way on mountain bikes. But I was skeptical of even that; road bikes, in perfectly good shape, were renting for a couple Euros cheaper.

By our last morning in Paris, we’d finally figured out breakfast: sandwich, coffee, and a croissant—all for less than €5. My satisfaction with a good breakfast is second only to finding a good deal; at age seven, I cut my teeth clipping coupons from the Key Food circulars that I pruned from the Sunday newspaper faster than I did the comics.

We’d seen it from the Arc de Triomphe, the wide berth of Champs-Élysées, the food court on the top floor of the Galeries Lafayette. But tradition dictated that we see it in-person, too. You don’t need to read honeymoon blogs to understand why any trip to the City of Lights wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the world’s most iconic symbol of love—but I’d strongly recommend it. “Just a glance,” writes one traveler, “can make you fall head over heels for it.” Another declares: “it is the best spot to confess your heartfelt feelings to your loved ones.”

I’d started to see the signs before we even sat down for breakfast. Glass-encased newsstands with fold-away shutters, graffiti-strewn streetlamps, pewter-green archways that spanned a canal the color of rusted pennies—like the Gowanus of my youth. Compared to Union Square, the only thing that felt out of place at the open-air farmer’s market in Bellevue was a man dragging a watermelon behind him in a milkcrate. The café where we had pistachio pastries—protein, naturally—featured a décor that would have made Williamsburg blush: Street Fighter II Turbo booted up on a battered Minolta monitor, a French cookbook composed entirely of recipes for preparing tofu.