As the train set out from Paris for the 2½-hour ride to Saint Malo (from there I would take a taxi to Dinard, across the bay), I wondered what I might write about. I had been to this corner of Brittany several times already, so I couldn’t, without putting on false airs of naiveté, write about first-time discovery. As a re-visitor I would have to find another angle, something more personal and insightful than “Brittany, wow!”

I made a list in my notebook of angles to consider based on my expectations of the weekend: seaside walks in Dinard, rampart strolls in Saint Malo, oysters, granite, crepes; or something with more of a storyline: taking a break from city life, visiting friends at their vacation home, spending the weekend with a couple when single. Maybe I would find something new and unexpected while there. I gazed out the window at the passing damp spring countryside and soon dozed off, awaking only as the train, having entered Brittany, approached Rennes before turning north to the coast.

My friends are warm, generous hosts. They laid out an abundance of pre-shucked oysters for lunch. With one of the couple we visited art galleries. We examined ads in the windows of real estate agencies. The other bought pastries, which we ate at teatime while watching a nature documentary on TV during a brief bout of rain. We separated and reunited. We went to their favorite creperie for dinner. Afterward, we lounged on long, deep couches in the living room. We removed our shoes at the door and wore slippers in the immaculate house.

I took seaside walks with the two of them, and with one or the other, and alone. I shot photos and videos as future prompts or reminders for the as-yet-undefined article: a statue of Alfred Hitchcock, cliffside and clifftop houses, rock, sea and sky, and more rock, sea and sky. Once, when taking the seaside walk alone, I watched a water walker, a grey figure in a grey sea against a grey sky. Later, rounding a bend, I observed two women approaching from the opposite direction with the hand of the one holding the crux of the elbow of the other, as friends and couples did more often long ago. Suddenly, one of the gals slipped on the damp seaside walk and let out a high-pitched yelp, but she was held secure by the grip of the other. They stood locked in place and laughed as though on the edge of a precipice. As I passed by, their broad smiles invited me, as their witness, to share in the joy of their accidental choreography. I obliged. Further on, I stared into the crevice of a dark, damp inlet and imagined that a hermit lived there. On the way back, I looked up to a steep-gabled Belle Epoque villa on the cliff and envisioned the ghost of an old aristocrat standing sentinel by a parted velvet curtain. I raised a hand and waved, and was amused by the thought that if anyone was actually looking down at the walkway just then, they would be startled to think that they were the one being watched.

With one or the other of the friends, or when the three of us were together, the conversations were fluid and droll, occasionally mutually mocking, at times requiring political or cultural or gastronomic analysis. We agreed, we disagreed, we informed each other, we told stories. The tête-à-têtes were more personal and jokey with the one, more work-related with the other, equally engaging, none troubling.

I enjoyed a restful, well-fed, sea-bracing stay. There had been but one moment of tension the entire time. At the end of the meal of enhanced leftovers the second evening, and in the midst of a light and teasing exchange about housework, a brusque gesture between me and the less prim of the couple caused the helpless slip of a wine glass that I failed to save and which then crashed onto the sparkling tile floor. The resulting tension was within the couple. My comment that luckily they hadn’t brought out their best stemware for me anyway failed to resonate as humor. Instead, I was told that I was “not helping” and shooed into the living room.

As far as I could tell, and like the shards themselves, no trace of the event remained by the time we all retired to the couches to watch an episode from season three of a Netflix series that the couple had been following. I had never seen the show, so one of them launched into explanation, perhaps excessive, and stopped the episode twice within the first few minutes to provide additional details, which aggravated the other, who then went upstairs for a bath, leaving the first to decide whether to watch the episode with me now or save it for later. I might have been wrong about the shards, I thought, as the one who remained pushed play.

On Sunday afternoon, after 48 hours in Dinard, I hugged and kissed the friends good-bye—they would soon be returning to Paris—and took the small ferry across the bay to Saint Malo. With no obligations in Paris until Monday afternoon, I’d decided to stay in the area another 24 hours. I didn’t have a care in the world. Being alone on a boat at sea after a warm embrace on the quay carried with it the thrill of solitary freedom and possibility. I stood at the stern by the fluttering French flag watching Dinard fall away, then turned to Saint Malo with its central steeple poking out from the level town, then back again to see Dinard receding beyond the bay, then again to Saint Malo growing larger. I felt eager, inspired, untethered and buoyant as I turned back and forth as the ferry approached the granite expanse of the walled town. That—that feeling, that sense of possibility—that’s something I could write about, I thought. It felt like the culmination of the weekend. But I had only just arrived at Saint Malo. I picked up my bag and disembarked.

I set off from the quay for the hotel where just that morning I’d reserved a room. My memory of previous visits to Saint Malo allowed me to find the hotel with a single glance at the map.

The hallway lobby sat still and quiet, with the only light coming from a tall side window. I rang the bell on the counter. After a moment, a door marked Privé opened and a woman with a tea-towel over the shoulder of her pale housedress shuffled out to greet me. She switched on a single light overhead but the ceiling was so high that the twilight atmosphere of the lobby barely changed, though I now saw that her housedress was pale blue and the tea-towel, which she set aside, dark grey. I said Bonjour, Madame, announced my name, and said that I’d called just that morning for the reservation. She repeated my name when she found it in the reservation book, said, “One night,” and asked if I’d have breakfast in the morning. “No thank you,” I replied. She then grabbed a key attached to a red tassel from a hook on the board behind the desk and invited me to follow her. She was welcoming enough, though I thought she could be warmer, even chatty, given that no one else seemed to be around. I supposed that I’d interrupted her cleaning.

While being shown to my room, I remarked on the quiet. She said nothing in return. I inquired if I was the only client for the night, half-hoping it were the case for the eerie pleasure it would give, half-hoping it weren’t for the mystery of encountering one or two other travelers. Her abrupt response, “No, there are others,” indicated that she had been offended by the question, perhaps compounded by my unwillingness to pay for a hotel breakfast.

I was given a large room on the second floor with a high ceiling, a king-size bed, and a view over a little square. It was quite attractive for the price, greatly reduced for this off-season Sunday night. If I cared to write about the hotel—handsome, comfortable, inexpensive—I’d need to ask her to see other rooms, and I’d then feel obliged to take breakfast, none of which interested me. She handed me the key and wished me a pleasant stay.

I set down my bag, removed my shoes to lie on the bed, as though that’s what I’d come for, then immediately put them back on. I took the foldable umbrella from my backpack and went out to explore the walled town.

After a few blocks I climbed onto the ramparts just as the blue sky was being overwhelmed by billowing smoke-like clouds. Wind roughened the sea. A mist enveloped me, then a light rain fell, but it only lasted several minutes before giving way to clear sky, until the smoky and darkening clouds reappeared as if out of nowhere, renewing the cycle of mist and rain before the return of a sky so startling blue that I thought this time it was meant to last through the day.

Across the estuary I spied the seaside promenade of Dinard that I’d walked along several times over the previous two days. The moment had come, I thought, to settle on the topic for an article. I’d lost the wave of feelings and thoughts of the crossing—something about freedom and possibility. I now had nearly the same view as from the ferry, yet the rocks, the sea, the sky, appealingly forceful and unstable as they were, now seemed more inevitable than promising. I tried to think of what I found especially interesting about Dinard or now Saint Malo. Interesting—such a bland word. Looking for “interesting” suggested boredom. I lifted my phone to photograph the statues on the ramparts of the navigator-explorer Jacques Cartier and the corsair Robert Surcouf and, beyond the ramparts, the island where writer-politician François-René de Chateaubriand was buried. Maybe the life or deeds of one or two of them could form the subject of an eventual article. Yet was anyone interested in these historical figures? I wasn’t. Anyway, I didn’t care to think about researching anything. What was left of them but statues for tourists to photograph? And here I was doing just that: taking pictures and making sweeping videos, recording what I saw, without particular interest or attention.

It made me feel like a bored tourist, looking for something to be “interesting.” Was I bored, already, with Saint Malo—rather, with myself in Saint Malo? Did I need to create anything at all from the weekend beyond my immediate enjoyment and thoughts, my time with friends, my encounter with the coast? I put away my phone, telling myself that I’d rather just walk, visit and explore than think that my footsteps or my surroundings needed to be organized thematically. No one was actually waiting for an article from me about Dinard or Saint Malo, or about Brittany at all for that matter. The prospect of not writing one, however, felt now like a failing given my earlier intent. But why feel married to intentions? If the original intent no longer inspired me then… Yet I was a travel writer—was I still?—and here I was.

I am here, I thought. I took in the view of the rugged coast, the powerful seascapes, the rocky outposts, the innumerable skies. I wanted to go out on the beach and down to the water.

I descended from the ramparts and exited the city gate to walk along the beach. It was low tide; water’s edge seemed unreasonably distant. An old fortress was planted on the rocks several hundred yards from the town walls. Vaguely linking the two was a dark, craggy outcrop that became increasingly nebulous as it approached the fortress. Mostly submerged at high tide, the uneven band of rock was now exposed. It promised a sweeping view of the walled town, the fortress, the ambiguous coast to one side, and to the other the wide beach and straight extension of the town with its thalassotherapy hotel complexes.

I stepped over the lower rocks then climbed onto the outcrop for a high central point of view. No, I wasn’t bored in the least. My mind at that moment felt as bright and clear and intangible as the naked blue sky overhead as the wind tugged at my jacket. I put my cap in pocket so that it I wouldn’t fly away. Minutes later, an unsettled and unsettling grey arrived like a lid over the mist that now surrounded me, and I sensed an unsettled and unsettling change within me as well. Turning west, I faced the formidable and uncompromising sea and felt it’s reflection in my churning mood. Then turning east, I fathomed an ambition—or was it a disillusion? —as relentless and stealthy as the remote tideline imperceptibly making its way toward me.

This was what I’d been looking for. I took the phone from my pocket to shoot a video of the full panorama, and in panning the surroundings I wondered if I truly felt any of what I’d just thought. Or was the sight of the changeable skies unattached to any needs, concerns, questions or desires of my own. Had I simply been reciting to myself seaside weather clichés as I stood straddling two boulders? What did I feel in this place? The wind blew strong. I looked away from the screen while still holding up the phone to complete another circular pan of the view, and then another. In doing so, I sensed a gap between what I saw and my own intimate experience of climbing along the rocks and standing there twisting and rotating as I shot the video. I sensed a metaphor of how cliché meets reality the way the sea meets the sky, whether as a clear line along the horizon or with no discernable separation. Or was that a simile? In trying to parse the comparison I lost hold of the original thought. And at that moment, I also lost my balance and slipped. I fell directly onto my rump on one of the boulders, dropping my phone in the process.

I was unharmed, I sensed that immediately, other than possibly a bruised buttock, but I also felt shaken by the realization that I’d come dreadfully close to falling between the rough and slippery rocks and risking serious injury. My phone had landed in a shallow, sandy pool. I climbed down to retrieve it and found with relief that it, too, was unharmed. How stupid, I thought, to have climbed along the slippery rocks, in this wind, with a phone in my hand no less, at my age! I wiped off the phone, placed it in my pocket, then slowly and carefully made my way back across the wet rocks. Once past the higher portion of the outcrop, I stepped over shallow pools of water and circumvented small boulders and rocks to reach open beach.

Yet I still felt the fright of the slip, the quickened heartbeat of a lucky escape. I envisioned the injury that might have occurred—a broken leg, a head wound, a fractured wrist, not to mention a busted phone. As I walked along the beach, I found myself spinning a yarn in which a traveler slips from a boulder, breaks his leg (and his phone) in the fall, and gets his foot caught between two rocks. No one hears him cry out as night falls and the inescapable tide rises.

The smoky sky had returned and was veering to charcoal. As a beating rain then fell, I realized that I’d dropped my umbrella when slipping on the rocks. Should I go looking for it now and truly risk harming myself? No. The rain drove me off the beach and back intra muros. I began to run in the direction of the hotel but after several minutes realized that I was lost. How could I be lost in such a rectilinear town that I’d visited several times in the past? I stopped under an awning to regain my bearings. Eventually, a man with a black labrador walked by as did other people. I didn’t know how long I’d been standing there before it registered that none of the passersby was holding up an umbrella; the rain had stopped. I recognized the shop across the street and was amused to realize that my hotel was just around the corner.

Rather than return to my room, however, I would find a place for dinner. I peered into restaurant windows for a seat and an atmosphere that would suit me, and eventually entered a pub. Strangely, while waiting for my order, I again felt the fright of the fall, as though stuck in that instant of losing control on the rocks, before I had landed unharmed. I remembered the women who’d laughed on the seaside walk when one had slipped, and how they’d invited me to share in their survivor’s joy and how I had. But now, once again, I found myself thinking of the harrowing tale of the man with the broken leg whose foot was stuck between rocks, out of view, in a dip in the outcrop, while the tide inexorably rose. I looked around the room for the type of character who might save me in that story. But why did I keep seeing myself as the protagonist in a panic before the rising tide when here I was, eating fish and chips, finishing a beer, ready to return to a pleasant hotel? Why couldn’t I let go of the tremor of near escape that I felt in my heart?

It stayed with me on the short walk back to the hotel, and into the dimly lit hallway lobby, and up the steep stairwell to my room. Looking at myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth, I was unable to shake the shiver of what might have happened. And once in the large bed, turned on my side with one arm wrapped around a long, firm pillow, I listened to my heartbeat repeating what-if-what-if-what-if-what-if as the tide rose. I must have fallen asleep before the water reached me.

The following morning, as the train left the station, I took out my notebook and pen. I read the list that I’d written at the start of the weekend: seaside walks in Dinard, rampart strolls in Saint Malo, oysters, granite, crepes; taking a break from city life, visiting friends at their vacation home, spending the weekend with a couple when single. I began to add to the list, starting with “the sensation of solitary freedom and possibility when crossing the bay,” but no sooner did I finish the line than I felt in my heartbeat the cry of the injured man faced with the rising tide: what-if-what-if-what-if-what-if. The train rolled south to Rennes. I gazed out the window at the fleeting tangle of trees. From Rennes the train turned east toward Paris, and somewhere, I wondered where exactly, the train left Brittany. It was in that somewhere that I decided I would have to save myself.

© 2024, Gary Lee Kraut

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© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut, All rights reserved.

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It’s a beautiful spring day today. We’re told that the air is moderately polluted, nevertheless the sky is cheery enough in its gauziness and the leaves of the Turkish filberts that line the street are a flirty green. I’m pleased that the scraggly lavender on my balcony has survived the winter. I could plant flowers, herbs. I could go biking out of the city. I could call a friend to play tennis.

No, not now. Comfortably ensconced on my couch, I consider the invitations, the pdfs, the brochures I’ve printed out and the documents I’ve received by post and at press events. I think about which exhibitions I might attend, which themes I’d like to investigate further, which piece of cultural news I might write about on its own or as part of something larger.

Aquitaine, the long coastal region of southwest France with the Dordogne bulge, is making a presentation about naturism and nudist camps; Douai, in the north, has mounted an exhibition about the preservation (and destruction) of art and cultural heritage during WWI, “Monuments Men” of an earlier generation; Fontainebleau has a new exhibition about François Gérard, “painter of kings, king of painters,” whose name has largely slipped through the cracks of art history; the Fraternal Order of Tripe Producers is once again gathering in Charlesville-Mézières.

I feel like I’m traveling. This is couch surfing at its best, and in Paris no less. I make coffee, grab a couple of macaroons that a thoughtful friend brought over the other day, take a few books from the shelf, notice the “Je ne suis pas un touristes” (I’m not a tourist) button then I was once given by a Burgundy tourist official, look down from the balcony to watch a woman who has strangely stopped in the middle of the crosswalk as though she’s suddenly forgotten where she was going, and I return to the couch.

As I say, I’m staying in today, working—though maybe work isn’t the best term for examining these documents and looking up further information in books; shuffling through them brings in no income, though it may eventually lead to some reward beyond knowledge itself. There must be some recompense for knowing that a nudist B&B has opened near Saint Emillion, n’est ce pas?

Perhaps it’s more like stamp collecting, traveling through space and time, sometimes daydreaming, sometimes investigating further before deciding that this one more special than that. In the past 45 minutes I’ve learned tidbits about the history of mining in Lewarde, the new WWI presentation in Péronne, the old recipes being revisited at the Napoleon III Festival in Vichy, the museum restoration in Pont-Aven, the biking routes around Bordeaux and the restaurant in Strasbourg that gained its first Michelin star.

I go through the pile: the Army Museum (Les Invalides) in Paris is examining the reality and the legend of d’Artagnan and the Musketeers; the Pinacothèque in Paris is doing the same with Cleopatra; Versailles has sent out their schedule of operas and concerts; Alsace, Poitou-Charentes, Limousin, Burgundy, Bordeaux, etc. Culture, history, folklore and gastronomy are in constant bloom throughout France.

One day, I think, I’ll get a call for personalized advice from VIP travelers with an interest in WWI, Napoleon III, d’Artagnan, Alsatian gastronomy, Burgundy wine, norther tripes and southern nudist B&Bs and I’ll know exactly where to steer them for an extraordinary stay in France.

But what’s this doing in the pile? A notice from the French tax authorities! And this? Something about new health coverage premiums. The Burgundy tourist official was right: je ne suis pas un touriste. But it’s such a beautiful spring day—I think I’ll go biking.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

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Tourists have been doing it for some time already, other than the self-censoring “Parisians don’t … so I don’t” crowd.

But this year another “don’t” bites the dust.

“Parisians don’t wear sneakers” fell by the wayside in the 90s.

“Parisians don’t eat hamburgers” got gobbled up in the 2000s.

The demise of “In Paris men don’t wear shorts” is now official.

The signs were already here in the dead of winter as men of all ages set about jogging in tights. Men’s running tights, like shorts, are nothing new on the market but rarely had Parisian men dared such public snugness off of the beach. I figured that if men can run around in tights then it’s no daring leap to wearing shorts as the weather warms, even though warmth has been a frustratingly relative term thus far this year.

And so it has come to pass, weather permitting, with men being spotted wearing knee-length cargo shorts, straight shorts showing a flash of knee, flappy shorts showing a glimpse of thigh and the occasional Bermuda, and I’ve even seen some 70s style jean cut-offs on the cobblestone catwalks of my quarter.

The arrival of shorts will now, one hopes, lead to the demise of that most unfortunate article of recent men’s fashion, the pedal pusher, the capris, le pantacourt, those sockless little-boy knickers that found their way into the closets of men and that for several years now have provided proof that les parisiens take their fashion clues not from other men but from les parisiennes. Adieu, then, as pedal pushers find their rightful place in the garbage bin of recent fashionography.

And a hearty and long overdue bienvenue to shorts on men in Paris.

As to that old favorite, “Why do they all smoke?” that’s still got wind in its sails.

© 2013, Gary Lee Kraut

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OMG, just look around you in Paris on this frigid morning and bear witness to the city’s sinful descent: a city where sculptures of naked men and women shamelessly decorate the gardens, the capital of a country with a national health system that pays for birth control pills and abortions, a place where tourists mock communion while visiting Notre-Dame and Sacré Coeur then queue happily at Ladurée and Pierre Hermé to gorge themselves on colorful sugar wafers, 2€ a pop, where a president lives openly in sin yet declares it a private matter, a metropolis where an atheist majority has twice elected a homosexual mayor (who may soon have the right to preside over ceremonies to marry other homosexuals) and where two women, twin Jezebels, are now publicly hissing and clawing at each other as they fight to replace him rather than stay at home caring for children and pleasing husbands.

Repent! Repent! Or we’ll all be damned and frozen for eternity.

Or so it is written in stone above the central door of Notre-Dame in the City of Paris, where blasphemy is not a crime.

(c) 2013, Gary Lee Kraut.

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If it were to be sunny in Paris on March 20, which it won’t be, what significant event could you witness around the corner from this wall?

And the correct answer, drum roll, is:

A circle of sunlight through a hole in the wall of the southern transept of Saint Sulpice hits a marker on the floor to indicate that the March (or vernal or spring) Equinox has arrived.

Kudos, congratulations, glory and a kiss on both cheeks to those who knew it.

Click here for some images from inside Saint Sulpice and an explanation of why the Church wished to “mark” the date of the March equinox.

Enjoy the spring!

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On Monday September 17 those conditions arrived: a cool light breeze, grey skies, a workday, a change of seasons. And on cue, like some kind of larva or flower, scarves appeared.

Every Parisian—man, woman, irrespective of age, race, origin and income—donned one.

Well, maybe not everyone, but those who missed the prompt on the 17th, having been caught neck-naked before their peers, colleagues and closest enemies, quickly returned to their closet and drawers so as to emerge scarved and thus fully clothed on the 18th.

Suddenly they were—they are—everywhere: loose cotton scarves, thick wool scarves, tight silk scarves, draped scarves, discreet solids, polyester pleats, crinkled pinks, tasseled greens, turquoise blues, bulging fleeces, bamboo stripes, traditional prints, flower prints, faded paisleys, Iraqi plaids, neck-worn kaffiyehs, knit scarves falling like pigtails down the back or over the breast, old swatches, roughened cashmeres, just-in-case shawls, shoulder throws, muffler scarves, back-hanging wraps, pendulum ties, double loops, triple loops, slip knots, braids, knot rows, roll-and-tucks, school-age fringes, wrap-and-knots, ironic ascots, devil-may-care wrap-arounds, bright kerchiefs, fringed wrap-and-sweeps, guadaloops, africontours, branded squares, and so much more.

The famous French rentrée of September—that back to school, back to work, back to the ranks of the employed or unemployed, back to friends, back to political crises; that time of new restaurants, new prices, new exhibitions, new books, new lovers, easy break-ups—is but a delusion of change (plus ça change…). Because what Parisians most long for is their neck-wrap of a security blanket against the elements and against changing fashion.

Yes, against changing fashion. Foreign visitors incorrectly see the scarf as a sign of fashion. If it were then everyone would be wearing the same scarf in the same way with the same three or four print or colors. No, the scarf is non-fashion. It’s a Parisian’s pacifier, a self-comforting sign that he or she is headed somewhere and is not alone, like a cup of coffee in the hand of a New Yorker, like a religious symbol or garment worn by a fundamentalist. The scarf quickens the step and lifts the chin and makes its wearer feel determined, aloof, protected, dressed in a constant embrace.

Here, on the damp, anonymous streets of the capital, each Parisian carries his or her scarf like an imaginary friend that can be twisted, knotted, tied and retied yet always remain, a crumb catching, ash dropped, perfumed, personal odored companion, a visible swath of intimate comfort.

Listening to the chatter of springtime in Paris the uninitiated may believe that Parisians live for summer vacation (vacations, they will say in the plural, for there are so many places to vacate to and from), but such chatter is a falsified or delusional expression of joy. The pursuit of warm-weather happiness is not written in the constitution of French being. Ask a Parisian in the third week of September how her vacations went and how her rentrée is going and she’ll say, “Oh, that was long ago.” Indeed, three weeks on, those destinations ( Thailand, Croatia, Morocco, Israel, Italy, the beach, the village, the friends, the cousins, the Americas) reveal nothing about who she is or wishes to be.

For what the Parisian wishes to be above all is that woman in the street or that man in the café in the season in which she or he feels most at home, the season that coincides with the start of autumn but goes far beyond that, that most Parisian of seasons, the season that, through rain, shine, mist, flurry, warm-spell, cold-spell, good news and bad news will continue well into spring: scarf season.

It has arrived.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

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For an hour or two we can fool ourselves into believing that we’ve gained an hour of Saturday night partying or of Sunday morning leisure or of weekend sleep. But before long we realize that turning back the clocks forces us to face up to our own dwindling time.

Evening is already night. Soon, late afternoon will be evening. It’s no wonder that the Catholic tradition in France is to go to the cemetery on November 1 to place chrysanthemums on the tombs of loved ones, as here at Pere Lachaise.

Oh, it’s a straight path to the end alright.

The only beliefs worth holding onto are that the seasons are cyclical and that the earth will continue to rotate round the sun and that before we know it the days will be getting longer and come spring we’ll have the afternoon sky back, followed by daylight in evening. Then night will simply be night again, not day as well.

In the meantime, let’s just have a good cry for the end of daylight saving time, our fair-weather friend.

Let’s contemplate our loss…

and let go of those things we can’t change…

and hold onto to sweet memories…

and accept that for the next few months we’ll still be looking out the window from our desk in the afternoon…

when night falls.

– Photos and text © 2011, Gary Lee Kraut.

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Last month was the coolest July on record in 30 years and probably the grayest too. June saw two overheated days of about 100 degrees F. but otherwise there’s barely been a t-shirt in sight in Paris for the past two months.

Personally, I’m sick of it. Of course, if you read the blogs you know that it’s socially incorrect for an American to be sick of anything in Paris. Paris is perfect at every moment, they say, and we should be cheerful all the time and say that we ♥ Paris day in day out. Well I don’t heart Paris when it’s grey for all of June and July! And I don’t heart Paris when there are steel wool clouds overhead in August. If we’re going to suffer the consequences of global warming at least let me get a tan!

A friend of mine was visiting from Philadelphia in July and I couldn’t get him to agree that a daytime high of 65 degrees in July with the constant threat of rain was neither fun nor beautiful. Paris, I assured him, had seen better days. But for him it was already perfect. He kept saying how ideal the weather was (admittedly he’d been suffering through a long string of 100 days back home). He told me that being in Paris made him want to do nothing more than to walk around all day with a baguette in his hand. Unfortunately, walking around with a baguette in a drizzle is not a great recipe for anything but a soggy baguette. Still, he kept up his good cheer about the weather for five days, and then, without a single complaint, he left under a drizzle for Charles de Gaulle Airport. Two hours later I returned from an appointment to find him standing in front of my building. He’d gotten his passport stolen from his pocket on the way to the airport. He looked miserable. The sun shone briefly on the sidewalk.

On August 1 the sun was out, temperatures in the low 70s. I went out biking. The sky was a bit hesitant but finally, it seemed, summer had arrived. Same thing on the second. But by the third the steel wool was back overhead. The photo you see here was taken from my balcony at 1:25pm today, August 5. It’s warm enough to dare a t-shirt but too threatening to venture very far with a baguette.

Writing, as everyone knows, is a form of therapy, and many of the “I heart Paris” bloggers seem to be in highly medicated therapy. Still, they might be onto something. So I’m hereby giving myself some cheerful Paris blogging therapy by listing 5 reasons why I ♥ cool gray weather in Paris this summer.

5 Therapeutic Reasons Why I Heart Cool Gray Weather in Paris This Summer

1. Great sleeping weather. Window open, my winter comforter still on the bed, I’ve been sleeping great and then have plenty of energy through the day, except when I take a nap, because it’s great napping weather too!

2. Fashion has remained in the closet. Other than the fashion this summer of white tennis shoes, which, as a tennis player, I owned anyway, no significant fashion statements were able to take hold in Paris this summer because it’s been too cool to wear them. We can all be thankful for that. (Those plain knee-length shorts with stuffed pockets that we see walking about are actually old news.)

3. Think of all the café money I saved. With no desire to sit outside in a café because no hot days to draw me to a $6 soda and no hot nights to inspire friends to call at midnight to say that they’re in my neighborhood, would I like to meet them for a drink, I’ve probably saved a few hundred euros in café expenses over the past two months. Then again, maybe I don’t have any more friends who stay out late because they’re all getting old, which would mean that I’m getting old. But I’m backsliding a bit in my therapy there, so suffice it to say that I think the weather gods for saving me money this summer.

4. The grapes are happy, and that should make us all happy. A warm dry April and May followed by a cool wet June and July makes for happy grapes in early August. Provided that major rainfall holds off for the next 3 or 4 weeks so as not to bloat the grapes, it’s going to be a good, early harvest. Which reminds me that I visited three wine regions last month—Champagne, Burgundy and Saint Pourçain, which sounds more like a cheese—so it hasn’t been such a bad summer after all. Which further reminds me that I’ll be leading an organic Wine & Dine walking tour on late afternoon and evening of Wednesday, August 11. Those who would like to join can write to me for more information through the France Revisited Contact page.

5. We’re never alone when we talk about the weather. There’s no greater way to feel connected with others than to talk about the weather because everyone relates to the subject all the time. I’ll post on Facebook “68 degrees and cloudy in Paris” and within three hours 25 of my bestest friends in the whole world will commune with me by posting temperatures around the globe. Before long we all want to join Annie in a chorus of “The sun will come out, tomorrow…” Sing along!

© 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Five Therapeutic Reasons Why I ♥ Gray Weather in Paris This Summer appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I usually answer “Whenever you can make it.” But the real answer is June, those long days of spring-to-summer when Paris is at its most vibrant, when you can still get a seat in a café of a village square in Provence, when you can still get a last-minute hotel room in Biarritz, when the tennis at Roland Garros is on TV (or better yet when you’re actually attending matches), when Normandy celebrates D-Day and the Liberation, before the biking routes of the Loire Valley get crowded, before traffic along the Riviera comes to a complete stop, when the Burgundy vineyards are in flower…

In a word: NOW!

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