I’m very fortunate to have married someone who loves to travel and to have two daughters who (for the most part) enjoy it as well. Since they were born (2004 and 2007), we’ve been planning to take them to Europe when they were teenagers. A huge pile of frequent flier miles helped us bring those plans to reality last week.

Since I’m a little jet-lagged and knowing I’m headed back on the road tomorrow, I thought today I would share some photos I took of the streets of Paris with some quick observations. And, please, I know the cultures of the United States and France are very different and I’m not suggesting it would be easy or straightforward for North American cities to become Paris, but as my friend John Anderson has said many times, we don’t need to be Paris, we just need to be a slightly less crappy version of America.

In that mindset, there are certainly a lot of simple things that can be learned.

1. Street Trees

Especially here in my hometown, I’m constantly hearing how we can’t have street trees, largely for maintenance reasons. The leaves drop and mess up the drainage. The roots damage the pipes. They are in the way for people in wheelchairs. Car drivers will hit them. And my favorite: If we ever need to widen the street, they are in the way.

And, of course, there is the persistent criticism of street trees: They won’t grow. My response to all of these criticisms has been to point to amazing places full of street trees and say, “If they can do it, why can’t we?” Paris is full of street trees, and it has been doing it successfully for a lot longer than any modern North American city has existed.