The best mornings in Paris happen by accident, or at least that’s how they feel. We arrived at Sain Boulangerie early in the morning, the kind of place where the bread has been proofing since before dawn and the croissants are still warm enough that the butter hasn’t fully set. Our son wanted a pain au chocolat. We wanted coffee. We stood in line with maybe two other people, all of us there for the same reason: this is where the good bread lives.

By the time we had our order, the sun was already hitting the Canal St-Martin at an angle that made the water look like it was reflecting light from somewhere other than the sky. We walked down to the canal’s edge, found a bench that wasn’t occupied, and sat. We drank coffee. A boat passed. Another one. Nobody was in a hurry. Nobody was checking their phone to see if they’d missed anything. The morning just happened, the way mornings in Paris are supposed to happen when you’re not trying to fit the city into a three-day itinerary.

This is the version of Paris I wanted to show my friends from California when they visited. Not the Louvre, not the Eiffel Tower at sunset, not the version of Paris that exists in photographs. The version where you wake up, you go to a bakery that actually cares about fermentation and butter, and then you sit by a canal and watch boats while your coffee gets cold.