We first met in the Luxembourg Garden where I was sitting by the small Statue of Liberty after my morning class at the Alliance Française of Paris. It was the fall after graduating from Ohio State and I was now ready to make something of myself though I didn’t yet know what. My parents were pleased that I was continuing my education. I was studying French at the Alliance and pastry-making at the Ferrandi Paris cooking school.

I’d bought myself an exquisite chocolate éclair on the way to the park. After creating an Instagram post of a selfie in which I’m holding up the éclair like the statue her torch (Statue of Delicious #paris #thelife #frenchpastry), I sat down nearby to enjoy the pastry with the intent of then studying the passé composé of irregular verbs.

“Bonjour Mademoiselle,” he said. I looked up. He had lovely little brown eyes and smoothed-down brown hair, greying at the temples.

“Bonjour Monsieur,” I answered.

He lifted his palm toward the chair beside me and asked if it was occupied. Understanding his request more from his gesture than from his words, I removed my notebook and purse from the seat so that he could take the chair. Instead of moving it further away, he sat down beside me. He excused himself for remarking but said that he detected un petit accent.

“Je suis américaine,” I said.

“Amay-we-can,” he echoed with a scrunched smile without parting his thin pink lips, then, immediately switching to English, he added, “your accent is very char-ming. Do you know why we have a Statue of Liberty here?” he asked.

I did not.

He said, “But you should because you are Amay-we-can, so I will explain to you.” And so he did, as he would teach me much else, with intense, informative, endearing condescension, before concluding, “You have so much to learn.”

On our first date, the following evening, he took me to a wonderful little bistro, where a surly waiter served us a nice house red. When he told me again that I was charming, I felt myself blush. He called me his Mona Lisa because my name is Liz. I called him Bruno because that is his so adorably French name. When I told him that I would like to try the French onion soup, he said that was for tourists and he recommended instead the bone marrow, telling me that there was a sincerity to the presentation and sensuality to the texture. I marveled at the way used adjectives to describe food and accepted his suggestion. He ordered the pâté for himself, which he ate with thick chunks of sourdough bread. Then chicken supreme for me and andouillette for himself. We shared profiteroles for dessert. He wiped the chocolate from my lips with his napkin.

Afterwards, we walked along the Seine, where he lit a cigarette, and when it was finished, he flicked the butt into the river then turned and kissed me as the Eiffel Tower sparkled as though on cue. His breath tasted of a mix of cigarettes, coffee, wine, intestinal sausage, and a breath mint. It was a beautiful spring evening in Paris. I remembered the old song. He took my hand and we walked on, eventually reaching my chambre de bonne in the Latin Quarter.

I had only had sex with boys my age before, so this was different. He was 20 years older than me and knew not only what he wanted, as did the boys, but how to please. I was glad that I’d shaved that morning. After making passionate love, he opened the French window to smoke as I lay naked and mostly satisfied beneath the sheet. Leaning against the wrought iron railing, he blew rings out toward the zinc rooftop across the courtyard.

If you crane your neck to the right, I said, you can see the top of Sacré Coeur.

“Socray Core,” he repeated, mocking the way I pronounced it, then he stepped toward me and brushed his hand against my cheek and said that his Mona Lisa had a charming accent. He said that he would help me with my French, when it improved, but for now it was best to continue in English. He told me that since I was new in Paris it was natural to admire “Socray Core” from the window but that a real Parisian looks discreetly into the windows across the courtyard to watch people undress, and he pointed to a woman across the courtyard and one floor below who was removing her blouse.

He then told me that his wife and children were returning from vacation the following day, but he would be available on Wednesday afternoon.

“You’re married?” I ask, redundantly.

He waved away both the smoke and my question. He said that he and his wife were now old friends and stayed together only for the three children, so I shouldn’t worry my pretty little head about it. I ignored my mother’s voice in my head and thought, When in Paris…

Every Wednesday afternoon at about 5 o’clock (known here as 17 hour), he came up the stairs to my 7th-floor garret bearing gifts, either a pastry to die for or chocolates from what he said was the best chocolatier in Paris or a bottle of wine that he knew all about. Occasionally he would show up late, saying that he was stuck in court, and tell me that though he’d had a long, tiring day he couldn’t let a week go by without seeing his Mona Lisa. His Dior cologne arrived even more exhausted than he did, so several weeks into our relationship I asked him to shower on arrival. He said that despite man’s intelligence and ability to build great cities such as Paris, we are animals and should not fear our natural odors. I handed him a towel and reminded him that I was not born in the same den as he. He laughed and said that he would do anything to please this pretty lady.

He taught me many things. He taught me how to wear my hair and how to tilt my beret just so. He told me which exhibitions to see and how to appreciate movies without happy endings. He always left by 7:30—I should say 19:30. He called that a “reasonable hour for a lawyer.”

We rarely went out to dinner after that first time. He said that we had all we needed right here. The pastries and chocolates weren’t good for my diet but they were great for my Instagram.

We had plans to go to Deauville one weekend while his wife and children were visiting his mother-in-law in La Baule, but he texted me to say that his daughter was sick so we would do it another weekend. When I texted back to tell him that I was already waiting for him at the Gare Saint Lazare, adding an angry emoji, he texted back a reminder that he’d told me about his family responsibilities from the day we met and that he was the one with sick child, so I shouldn’t be a selfish about it.

The following Wednesday he brought me a gift as an apology. In a box bearing the name of a fancy shop on the rue Bonaparte in the Saint Germain Quarter there was a beautiful lavender scarf with a Galeries Lafayette label. He showed me different ways of wearing it, before lightly tying my wrists together with it while we made passionate love. He continued to teach me things, such as how to read the label of a bottle of wine and where I must go one day in Provence and when cherries are in season and why the Americans did not like the General de Gaulle.

In July, he told me that his wife and daughters had gone to Bormes les Mimosas for the summer and that he wouldn’t be joining them there until the end of the month, so we would have more time together over the next few weeks. “More time” ended up being two Mondays as well as the usual Wednesday. I suggested a weekend in Deauville but he said that there were too many lawyers in Deauville in summer. Instead, he said, it would be his pleasure to take me someplace nice for dinner on Wednesday. I’d been living in Paris for nine months by then so I knew right away that the bistro he’d selected in the Latin Quarter was unexceptional; it had only a 4.3 rating on Tripadvisor. But I was intent on enjoying myself. I’d checked out the menu online and asked AI what wine would go best with foie gras and pike quenelles, which I intended to order, and with whatever offal he might, and was told Pouilly Fuissé. So I proudly suggested that as we ordered. Instead, he asked the cute and efficient waiter for a bottle of a Sancerre red, telling me that I would understand the subtleties better with time. The young waiter nodded as he said, “Oui monsieur.” It took little time to discover that the Sancerre fell flat with my order. When I asked if he wanted to split an order of profiteroles for dessert, he said that I should profit from them (that was his profiterole joke) myself while he went outside for a smoke and to call his children. In his absence I chatted with the cute, young, efficient waiter, whose chestnut brown hair that fell adorably over his espresso eyes. He complimented me on my French and agreed that Pouilly Fuissé would have been the better choice. When he delivered the profiteroles, I asked him to take my picture with them. He sensed that Bruno and I were not married. He said that a man should not leave a charming young lady like me alone at the table. I agreed, and when he efficiently asked for my Instagram, I agreed to that and asked for his as well. His name is Pascal.

Pascal tells me that he adores me, and I feel the same. We’ve been together for three months now. He’s got me listening to rock from Brittany and using French slang, like kiffe for like and ouf for great, though we mostly speak in English. I’ve got him listening to Taylor Swift and wearing deodorant. We’re looking for a two-room flat to move into together. He supports my ambition of giving pastry tours to tourists while writing a book about how a girl from Ohio became a true Parisienne, illustrated with some of my Instagram photos, which he never fails to kiffe. When I tell him my dream of opening a donut, cupcake, cruffin and cake coffee shop that I would call Morning Liza, he says that would be ouf. I haven’t told him that my father runs the largest car dealership in Ohio, nor that I’ve been seeing my old lover on Wednesdays.

But I don’t have to think about the latter anymore because I told Bruno yesterday, after we made unimaginative love and while he was smoking by the window, that I wouldn’t be able to see him anymore because I was moving in with someone.

“A boy?” he asked, blowing smoke from the side of his mouth.

“A man,” I said.

He stubbed his cigarette in the flower box. He said that this—the two of us—hadn’t been working out for a while anyway because I was too much of a child and that I shouldn’t call him anymore, and anyway, he’d met someone more beautiful and mature, a real Parisienne. He then turned to look out the window, first to the right for brief glimpse at the top of Sacré Coeur then to the windows down below. It crossed my mind that I could push him over the railing then tell the police in perfect French, using the passé composé, that he jumped out when I told him it was over. But he’s taught me so much over the past year that I’m actually grateful to him. Anyway, I’d rather have the pleasure of watching him leave my apartment angry and forlorn, the way he likes movies to end. For myself, I still prefer a happy ending.

© 2026.

Cliché, a Paris Love Story by Lainey Harper. Lainey Harper is the pen name of a writer who’s leaving the dream.

The post Cliché, A Paris Love Story appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

My parents were both great readers. In the family room, my father had built wall-to-ceiling shelves that my parents then filled with books. These were mostly adult books, poetry for my mother, fiction for my father. As I grew up, I came to enjoy his favorite authors: Mark Twain, with “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn,” of course, but also the less well known “Life on the Mississippi,” “Innocents Abroad,” and “Puddn’head Wilson,” a detective story.

They passed their love of reading on to me. I had my own large Philippine mahogany bookcase in my bedroom. It held, among others, the Oz stories, but I was a purist. I had only the original ones, those written by L. Frank Baum himself. The Oz books written by a successor after he died were just not the same. I also had a large collection of fairy tale books, notably the “color” series by Andrew Lang.

My father, an engineer working for a large oil company, was often gone on business, especially during World War II, which America joined after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when I was six years old. My father did not fight in the war as a soldier. He was an engineer, and the military draft authorities considered him more important in that role. Still, Papa would be away for weeks at a time, in the Pacific Northwest and Canada where there were oil deposits. He would send me postcards, including a humorous one showing a giant mosquito carrying off a deer. They were fun, but it wasn’t the same as having him there, reading me grownup stories like “The Count of Monte Cristo” instead of just the Mother Westwind stories Mama read to me about animals named Jimmy Skunk, Jerry Muskrat and Joe Otter.

I was bored staying home with Mama alone while my father was away. Luckily, I was saved by the neighbors. My father was often transferred because of his work, so we rented a lot of the time rather than buy a home. In 1942, we moved to Hillsborough, California. The Hammonds, our landlords, lived next door. They were not demanding or oppressive, the way landlords are often portrayed. They were open and friendly. Mrs. Hammond was particularly kind to me. One day she gave me a great gift in the form of an invitation. “I know how much you love our old house,” she said to me. “Our doors are never locked, you can come in whenever you want.” This was an unusual invitation, but for me, Mrs. Hammond was an unusual person because so unlike Mama. Her dress style was a great contrast to Mama’s. Instead of straight skirts and crisply ironed white blouses topped by cardigan sweaters, Mrs. Hammond’s home attire was faded blue jeans. They were perfect for the gardening she loved. During the war the Hammonds had a vegetable garden, a “Victory Garden” as they were called, the idea being that by growing a part of our own food, we were helping the war effort. I followed their example, and was proud of the carrots, beets, peas and string beans that I eventually provided for our dinner table.

I took advantage of Mrs. Hammond’s offer to visit next door whenever I wanted and I’d wander around the house, a big Victorian that had been in the family for generations. I mostly stayed in the downstairs rooms, which had the most character, where I would soak up the atmosphere of warmth and kindness I felt there. Especially, I’d visit her daughters Kate and Jane. Kate was six months older than I, and Jane, six months younger. They were my best friends. We played together almost every day, always at their house. Sometimes we went up to the attic, which had a trunk full of old clothes we could dress up in.

The Hammonds had only one bookcase, kept in what they called “the music room” because there was an upright piano against one wall. There, I often joined Kate and Jane to practice our scales. Music lessons were a must for nice upper middle-class girls like the three of us, the piano being the most popular instrument.

One day, when it was not my turn on the piano, I drifted over to the bookshelf across the room and explored its small collection. There were mostly medical textbooks left over from Mrs. Hammond’s time as a nurse before her marriage. But I also discovered a slim volume called “The Snow Goose” by the American writer Paul Gallico. It is a tale deriving from a real event of the Second World War, prior to the entry of the United States. It recounts the desperate sea evacuation of mostly British along with French soldiers trapped on the beaches at Dunkirk in northern France in 1940, using many small non-military ships and craft along with British destroyers and other military vessels. In the story, a large Canada goose plays a role in the rescue. “If you saw the goose,” one of the story’s fictional survivors says, “you were eventually saved.”

I read “The Snow Goose” for the first time right there on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room. It is a beautiful story, about a hunchbacked painter, an orphan girl, and a Canada goose, but because the painter dies during the evacuation it is very sad. It made me weep. Kate and Jane, busy working on a duet at the piano, did not notice my tears.

I continued to find “The Snow Goose” compelling. Seated on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room, I read it over and over. I kept rereading it until my father was transferred to Texas in 1948 and we moved away, when I was 13. Before we moved, I thought, briefly, of stealing “The Snow Goose”, carrying it off with me, but I could not do such a thing to the Hammonds, who had been such good friends to me. I left it where it was.

Years passed before I saw another copy of “The Snow Goose.” I came across it in a used bookstore in Montreal, when my late husband Earl and I were on vacation in Canada. This lovely book would be all mine, forever. It is a nicer copy than the one the Hammonds had, a special edition with four full-page color illustrations: one of the orphan girl with the goose in her arms, two of geese flying over the old lighthouse where the painter lived, and one of the Snow Goose alone in flight.

In my home in Paris where I now live, I have a bookshelf holding books that have special meaning for me. Occasionally, I’ll pick one up just to hold it in my hands or to flip through its pages or to reread it. Recently, for no conscious reason, I found myself drawn to my old and beautiful copy of the “The Snow Goose.” I reread it that afternoon and I loved it just as much as ever. I felt a connection with my six-year-old self sitting on the floor in the Hammonds’ music room. Though I hadn’t picked it up in many years, I realized that the book had been a part of my life for more than 80 years. Yet in the decades that I’ve lived in Paris, I had never been to Dunkirk, even though it’s only about 180 miles northwest of the city. I felt a sudden desire—no, a need—to go there.

I made plans to go on my own for one week this past September. I took the train to Dunkirk, a 2½-hour ride from Paris’s Gare du Nord. My daughter had reserved for me a nice hotel near the beach in Malo-les-Bains, once a distinct seaside resort, now fully a part of Dunkirk. It was from Malo that much of the beach evacuation took place in 1940.

My first day there produced typical Northern France weather, a sky like homogenous gray soup threatening rain, and a brisk wind. Reluctantly, I postponed my plan to stroll by the beach. I settled for visiting the nearby Dunkirk War Museum, Musée Dunkerque 1940 – Opération Dynamo. Operation Dynamo was the codename for the wartime evacuation. Visiting the informative museum was well worth my time. While many of the displays and photos naturally tell about the war, the evacuation and its aftermath, I was intrigued by two photos of Dunkirk and Malo before the war, before they were pounded into rubble by German bombings. In the few hours I’d been in Dunkirk, I could already see that most of what now stands has been built since the war. Always a book lover, I bought two books, one in French, one in English, both titled “Operation Dynamo.”

The following day the weather began to clear. I went for a walk on the paved promenade, what the locals call la digue (the dike), that runs the full length of the beach. I could see far out across the water, beyond the low dunes with gray-green marsh grass growing in the sand. This was one of the sites of the evacuation. There was still wind, but not so strong, and it didn’t buffet the numerous small white sailboats I saw. In a trick of the mind, I imagined that they were part of the flotilla of small craft arriving to carry the stranded soldiers away to safety to the larger ships waiting farther out, to take them on to safety in England.

The next day, I returned to the path along the beach, now with “The Snow Goose” in my purse. It wasn’t the beautiful copy I had at home, but a pocket-size edition that a friend whom I had told about this touching story and about my plan to visit Dunkirk had kindly sent me from England. I found a wooden bench where, under blue skies with powder puff white clouds, I sat and began to read. From time to time, I looked along the beaches around me where the men had awaited rescue and out to the sea before me. I noticed how shallow the water was for a good distance out. For the first time, I truly understood the need for small boats to evacuate the soldiers. The larger boats that had tried to come in to pick up the stranded soldiers could not, because there was not enough depth. Thus hindered, they made easy targets for the German planes overhead, diving and strafing. Still, the little boats were not spared.

I reread the “The Snow Goose” entirely that afternoon, occasionally pausing to contemplate my surroundings. In my mind’s eye I could see those little boats trying to dart away from the diving planes. Some got through. Others did not. The little boat in “The Snow Goose” was one of the latter. For the lonely painter and the orphan girl who had come to love him, there was only loss. Although I usually prefer happy endings, such an ending would never have touched me the way this sad one has. I was moved in an unusual way, not to tears for a beautiful tale, but by the realization of how very close this evacuation, a “non-victory” as Churchill put it, came to becoming a resounding defeat. Yet in the final accounting, 340,000 British and French troops were successfully evacuated. They formed the nucleus of an army which would fight again, and, four years later, with Americans now on their side, return to the shores of France to eventually defeat Germany.

Though this was my first time in Dunkirk, being there was like visiting my own past. I thought of the kindness of the Hammonds and our peaceable lives in California. I thought about the effects of World War II on the American home front, with our sense of a just and necessary war, and the effort to engage ordinary civilians, women and even children like me, through Victory Gardens and War Bond drives, events that marked my childhood and have stayed with me as “The Snow Goose” has for over 80 years. As I sat there, watching families now walking peacefully in the sunshine along the beach and looking out to the calm waters and little sailboats sliding on the sea, I realized that I am now old enough to remember a time that fewer and fewer do. I realized this not with sadness or even nostalgia, but with a sense of privilege at having been a part of those heroic times.

© 2024, Alice Evleth

Read the accompanying article Dunkirk 1940, Dunkirk Today: Advice for a Day Trip or an Overnight by Gary Lee Kraut.

The post The Snow Goose Returns to Dunkirk appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

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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You now live at the center of a nameless territory with a radius of one kilometer, legally circumscribed by coronavirus confinement. If you were to give that territory a name, it would be your own, as noted on the form that the roaming border police may ask you to produce to explain your reason for not staying at home.

You might call where you live a neighborhood. But neighborhood implies that others share a similar sense of its borders. Under the circumstances, that would apply only those who live at your address, i.e. in your building, with the same legal radius of movement, along with the man who sleeps beneath the awning of the shuttered restaurant downstairs, were he to note that as his address, which he wouldn’t. Or, if neighborhood this is, then it’s a quiet neighborhood with lots of joggers, lots of pigeons, a few ducks, and a fine selection of bread, cheese, produce and meat products.

You might call where you live a community. But a community would have a common characteristic or shared interest that would differentiate yours from other communities. Or, if community this is, then what it shares is relative financial security and a belief that some other community will service its shops, remove its garbage and feed its homeless. It would be a community whose members acknowledge each other’s presence just two minutes per day, when applauding medical workers from their windows and balconies, before closing their curtains.

You might call where you live a village. But a village would have a place of worship, a square, a municipal building or a commercial street at its center, and boulevards, parks, mansions or monuments at its borders, and perhaps a canal or river as its edge. Or, if village this is, then it’s one with no history to celebrate, no idiot or sage, and if someone were to ask where you live in this village you would answer, as the other villagers do, that you live in the center.

You might call where you live a bubble. But a bubble sounds light, hollow, unhinged and unstable. Or, if bubble this is, then it’s one created by the second best forms of social distancing: seeking out useful information minimally, heeding current events frugally, and sucking on social media sparingly. And it would be like a bubble in a glass of champagne, one of more than a million, in a glass served in an international toast to good health.

If you still lived in Paris, you would say that you live in a time zone designated as GMT+2. But where you now live you’ve little use for a numerical notion of time. The baker does, the cheesemonger does, the pharmacist does, the stock broker does. But you now live on your own meridian, neither plus nor minus, with little reason to check the hour.

Where you now live, time is divided into two parts that ease one into the other: one part under a lighter sky, the other part under a darker sky. You’re equally at home in both the shifting brightness of the one and in the calming constancy of the other. You have no need to interpret them as the God of the Bible did when he “called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’” You don’t need a name for them any more than you need to call what you set out to do “project,” what you accomplish “productive,” what you exchange “conversation,” and what you now give to the man beneath the awning “charity.”

You don’t need a clock to know that it’s 8PM because that’s when the applause, that you may or may not take part in, starts. You don’t need a clock when, at sundown, a police car making drive-by rounds slows at the end of the street and a policeman inside draws down a window and tells the men who gather to drink wine and tall beers at the corner to break up the party and go home. Like teenagers, the gathering men complain a bit, but as the tone of the order rises they do as they’re told.

When you do check the digits of time, it’s to note them on your signed declaration indicating the who, why and when of an excursion into your namesake territory. An annoying reminder of constraint, yes. But, while you’ve been asked to produce your form under the lighter sky, you’ve never been stopped under the darker. As you put on your jacket and shoes for the latter, the outing feels venturesome, nearly clandestine. Then, once on well-lit streets, you feel curious and free. Here and there you pass a man with his dog, a jogger, a still or sleeping figure beneath a bus shelter, or a wanderer whom you recognize as neither friend nor foe but simply another.

You’re free of Paris, that place where you no longer live. Yet you’ll hear and read some people claiming that they still do. Grandstanding, they are, as they make declarations about “Paris” and “Parisians,” as if they’d been tasked with translating the philosophical or psychological or emotional state of the inhabitants of a zone designated on a map as Paris.

They will say that Paris is dormant or veiled or abandoned to nature. But Paris isn’t sleeping; Paris isn’t hidden; Paris isn’t empty. Paris does not exist. The birds you hear don’t live in Paris, they just live, with fewer other sounds to interrupt their questions. One grandstander wrote that the quiet of the monument-dotted Paris where he claims to live is reminiscent of the German Occupation. He must have been reminiscing about the life of a collaborationist, because for most others Paris also ceased to exist during the Occupation.

You wonder how journalists even manage to find Parisians to observe or interview because there are none where you now live. Parisians dress more fashionably than the people you see. Parisians smoke more and they jog less than these people who pant by you in stern prayer of good health. Parisians stand talking to each other in the middle of the sidewalk without moving until you ask them, not like these people who make room for you to pass. Parisians cut in line, unlike these people queuing a meter apart. Parisians take turns going outside with their children, not in couples like the people you see. Parisians enjoy going out after dark—they don’t turn off the lights at nightfall. Parisians flirt, Parisians are snobs, Parisians ride scooters into their 50s. These can’t be Parisians. How could they be when they don’t live in Paris any more than you do?—though many may wish they did.

Do you?

Well, you have many fond memories of Paris. Paris has taught you much: about language, culture, cuisine, wine, history, Catholics, Algerians, Muslims, Sephardim, atheists, intellectuals, Revolution, art, pigeons, cats, politics, friendship, sex, taxes, health care, love, age, death, and certainly more. You remember the way you moved from her periphery to her core.

But you no longer need Paris to reap the intellectual riches that you’ve sown, nor to enjoy the relationships that you’ve developed. You’re nearly relieved to no longer live there. What could be more satisfying than to live in this–your—place and time? What could be more fulfilling than being where you are, both connected and individual, collective and unique, part of a vast historical-cultural-eco-bio-system and alone with these thoughts?

Sometimes you miss Paris, though not for long—because this place where you now live is so true to who you are and you are so central to its life that if anything is now missing it would be something much larger or more intimate than Paris. And knowing that, you resolve to not return to Paris when quarantine ends, but to stay right where you are, centered.

Text and photos © 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

Gary Lee Kraut, editor of France Revisited, leads the Paris Vignettes Writing Workshop, an international workshop that meets weekly via Zoom. Workshop participants work on short texts, both fiction and nonfiction, not necessarily about Paris. Texts may be part of a longer work (memoir, short story, personal essay, novel). Current participants join from France, the United States, Canada, England and Israel. For details, contact Gary directly at gary [at] francerevisited.com .

The post You know you live in Paris when… You don’t appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

You’re sitting at your desk 24 hours after the outset of the fire at Notre-Dame after being up much of the previous night, first having dinner with a friend, then standing in silence on Ile Saint Louis watching the blaze peter out, then speaking and texting with family and friends six time zones away, then having a Skype interview with NBC 10 Philadelphia during which you’re asked to describe how you feel, and you’re thinking you should stay in for the evening to work up a text on the subject of the monumental blaze for your website when you remember that you have an invitation stating that Prince Robert of Luxembourg, owner of Château Haut-Brion, would be pleased to have you attend that evening at a secret location in Paris the celebration of the new vintage and branding of Clarendelle wines, and you think WTF, you’re in Paris, you have the rest of your life to describe your relation to a monument that you’ve been inside a thousand times and seen 10,000 times from a distance, where you’ve taken hundreds of visitors of all ages and where twice you lit a candle, furthermore you’ve already posted a picture on Facebook and gotten dozens of likes, loves and teary-faces, and Notre-Dame is going to be alright.

So you take a shower and get dressed and put on your father’s old cap and take the metro a few stations then walk toward the secret location that was announced on the second invitation (the first invitation having said that Prince Robert de Luxembourg’s people will give you the address of the secret location if you accept that first invitation to receive the second), 13 rue de Sévigné, in the Marais.

Inspired by Belmondo

Passing the National Archives along Rue des Francs Bourgeois you sense that someone is walking beside but you but don’t pay attention because an important thought whips through your head about Notre-Dame and you stop to set it down in your notebook. Walking again you’re aware that a man is moving alongside you at the same pace and he may or may not be the person who was walking beside you before but you don’t look over because another brilliant thought about Notre-Dame is now whispering in your ear, so you stop to write it down.

Walking again you glance over to see the man, a young man, is now alongside you again and you turn a second time to look at him curiously in the eye and he looks at you boldly in the eye and says that he likes your look, a lot, and that it reminds him of Belmondo in some Belmondo movie that you’ve never seen, and his smile invites you to slow down to absorb this as an enormous compliment, and since you’re 60 and he’s, what?, 25?, and really just looks like a sturdy good-looking kid, perhaps with some Asian blood, who happens to be a fan of Belmondo in that Belmondo movie, you say, both of your still walking, Thank you, I’ve never heard that before, it must be the cap. Really, I mean it, sincerely, that’s a great look, he says, so relaxed in his offering complimentary gift, so pleasantly, naturally, confidently, flatteringly present there alongside you that you can only think to thank him again as you walk abreast.

He now asks if you’re a journalist, which is such a surprisingly specific question that you stop and tell him the truth: Sort of, you say, sometimes. How did you know? Because you kept stopping to write something down, he says with clarity and ease and you ask if he’s a journalist too and he replies No, I’m a poor student. You pretend to not pick up on the word “poor” and ask if he’s studying journalism, to which he replies No, applied mathematics and social sciences, and you’re incredulous that neither the gods, nor the prophets nor the saints speak with such bright-brown-eyed, round-shouldered assurance as this young man with dense jet black hair who now says, again, that he really likes your look with that cap. You reply that you need it so that your bald head won’t get cold whereas he certainly doesn’t have to wear anything to get by, and in saying so you resist reaching out to touch his perfectly healthy, vibrant black hair because this isn’t just any student, this is a poor student, and the secret location that you’re going to is in the Marais.

You continue to walk together, you asking about applied mathematics (Is that as difficult as it sounds? In fact I’m not starting until September. Easy then.), he asking about journalism (What are you writing about? Notre-Dame. I could have guessed.), until he says he’s turning right on Rue Vieille du Temple and, slowing down, you bid each other a good evening, after which you’re nearly disappointed that he didn’t actually show you his gigolo card so that you don’t have to wonder as you walk on, resisting the urge to look back, if you’ve just missed out on the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Inspired by Terror

Nevertheless, you feel flattered, and happy – how often does someone compliment you out of the Paris sunset blue like that – and spring is definitely in the air – and Notre-Dame, Notre-fucking-Dame, well, it’s not like after the November 2015 terrorist attack where 24 hours later you could still hear the echo of gunshot at the end of your street and had to deal with fear. Everything’s going to be alright here – everything is alright. Not only that, but the fire will be a blessing for tourism, money is already being promised by obscene millions, the French Catholic Church is bathing in a new identity as a survivor, French firemen are being praised in terms normally reserved for describing their pectorals and buttocks when their annual semi-nude calendar comes out, and everyone knows that Notre-Dame was in need of a structural makeover anyway.

You remember when in the wake of the terrorist attack NBC then MSNBC called for an interview, but you didn’t get much airtime because you didn’t respond on cue with the sought-after soundbites of tears, despair, defiance and hope. You were simply there, nearby, thinking, looking forward to dinner with friends. And the Catholic publication that called some time later because they wanted to know how someone like you, living in a martyred neighborhood, felt about the neighborhood after the attack, and what you felt by then was that everything was going to be alright, really, now that same publication has called again this afternoon to ask how you felt when you heard that Notre-Dame wouldn’t collapse from the fire and you may have again missed the mark because you told the journalist that you never believed that it was going to fall, that yes you were concerned that the rose windows might come crashing, which would have been the sad indeed, but that you never doubted that the structure would stand because there it stood, growing in international stature as you watched its crown of fire diminish in the night.

Inspired by Rejection

And here you are walking with your pseudo Belmondo look along Rue des Francs Bourgeois without imagining terrorists with semi-automatics rounding the corner, and what a lovely evening it is, the light of the setting sky playing with the stone of the Carnavalet Museum to the left and the Paris Historical Library to the right, Place des Vosges in the distance, with the promise of a wine launch party at a no-longer secret location on Rue de Sévigné, where you’ve arranged to meet an acquaintance who asked you last week to be her plus one – though you told her that you couldn’t be her plus one because you received your own invitation (which specifically denied the possibility of you bringing a plus one) and will have your own name on the guest list.

Except that once you’ve nodded your way past the bouncer with a nonchalant “I was invited,” the model-tall young woman at the guest-list desk asks for your first name and you mistakenly give her your last name because the last time you were at a party with a list alphabetized by first names was in the third grade, but your last name isn’t there so you redirect her finger by giving her your first name (realizing that it’s only natural that a Prince Robert of Luxembourg event would alphabetize by first names since he probably shuns any soirée where his name might be listed under L) and you find that neither your first name nor your last name, nor, just to case, your middle name, is on the list, leading the stylish guardian of said list to ask Who invited you? The PR rep from New York, you reply, after which she raises the bar and asks for his name, which you don’t remember because you’d never heard of him until he sent you the first invitation to suss out your interest in attending the soirée at the secret location that was then revealed in the second invitation accompanied by the joyful note That’s wonderful news that you will be able to join.

You now understand why there was no “us” at the end of that phrase, because when you ask to speak with the PR rep from New York you discover that he’s not there express directly how he feels about your not yet being able to join anyone. You look on your phone to retrieve his name from one of his messages but can’t find any, so you tell the tall guardian of the list that you’re here for Prince Robert of Luxembourg’s wine launch party, to which she replies from a height undoubtedly accentuated by heels that you’ll understand that this is an exclusive, private party and she can only let in those who are on the list.

Actually, you’re inside the party already and can see nearly the full scope of the place, and while she’s checking the name of someone who’s arrived behind you, you examine the loose group of about 50 people standing in pairs or threesomes, wine glasses in hand, talking and drinking with no apparent interest, and you sense that whatever list these people are on it is neither an A nor even a B list, but how could they be since you were invited?, that with the exception of a 4- or 5-piece band playing a worldwide hit from the 80s, meaning some effort was put into planning this event, the soirée doesn’t feel the least bit exclusive, and that the location isn’t so much secret as rented, meaning that all that’s left of the point guard’s original description is “private,” which isn’t a very enticing adjective in and of itself since it could just as easily be attached to “toilette” or “Idaho” as it could “soirée.” So you politely wait until she looks down at you again then say that you were invited as an American journalist by the PR rep in New York whose name you don’t remember but it’s really not that important so if she’d like you to leave you will, at which point she says Just a moment and goes to get someone from the sparse crowd because she knows as well as you do that the only person who would want to crash this party is an alcoholic and she really just wants you to produce a name and get on with it.

Inspired by Acceptance

The woman who now approaches you is a midsize brunette with glasses and a non-smile, meaning that she can only be the Paris PR rep. You expect her to ask your name but instead she asks who invited you, to which you reply Prince Robert of Luxembourg through his NY PR rep whose name you can’t remember, which leads her to say that she can’t let you in without knowing that person’s name because you must understand that this is a private party. At least she’s dropped the pretense of it being “exclusive.”

You have three choices: you can pull an Oprah (listed under O?) after she’s been told that a Hermès handbag wouldn’t go with her skin color and let your (79) followers know that you’ve been judged by the way you look (apparently not enough like Belmondo in that Belmondo movie), which would likely lead to you losing several of your followers who would accuse you of being insensitive to racism or, worse, of comparing your feelings to Oprah’s; you can leave with your ego intact because you never bring your ego to such events and really don’t care whether or not you’re allowed in other than the fact that you came all this way, which would lead to several sub-choices as to what to do if you do leave—walk over to view of the carcass of Notre-Dame, go to a bar, seek out the math student?; or you can search through your email on your phone again to find the PR guy’s name, which you do because, what the hell, it’s in there somewhere and you’re just one name-drop away from a glass of wine and some canapés.

Eventually you find it, you show the guy’s email signature to the beautiful giant who goes to retrieve the Paris PR chick, who mildly apologizes in a mildly annoying way by saying You understand we just needed a name because this is a private party, which lets you know that she’s not the boss at the agency because any boss would at that point consider the matter closed and lead you graciously to the bar instead of immediately disappearing into the crowd – or trying to but the crowd is too thin to disappear into – and as she walks away you think you would have had an easier time getting admitted to a press conference about the stability of Notre-Dame.

Inspired by Haut-Brion

You see another sort-of journalist you sometime run into at events involving wine and food and go over to say hello, followed by a handshake and an exchange of ça-vas, and you tell him that you see from his recent articles that he’s all over the place, in a good way, which he accepts as a compliment without offering in return anything but a look that tells you either that you never really knew each other so no need getting too chummy now or that he’s been hitting on the girl standing next to him and you’re clouding his image, probably both, so you go to the bar and ask for a glass of one of the six Clarendelle wines “inspired by Haut-Brion” on tap that evening, the merlot.

Prince Robert of Luxembourg is nowhere to be seen, not that you’d recognize him, but if he were here you’d surely notice someone fawning over him, yet no one appears to be fawning over anyone, let alone the wine. Everyone has a glass in hand, but no one is explaining it or examining it or discussing it, as the band now plays something hummable from the 90s that sounds no different from their take on the 80s. You stand among the others like extras on the set waiting for the stars to arrive, but it’s clear that they won’t be arriving because this is the party. The event is a reflection of the merlot itself: well-groomed, pleasant enough, needing something more than flower-topped canapés, sans plus, but here you are, not disappointed just hoping to catch someone’s eye so as to share a moment.

You reach for a canapé on a table beside a women standing alone and ask which wine she’s tasting. She looks at her glass as though surprised that she has one, says The bordeaux, then gazes off into the distance though the room is too small to have much distance to gaze off at, and you realize that your Belmondo look from that Belmondo movie is not having the same effect on her as it did on the young man on the street. Or would Belmondo try harder? If you had the nerve you’d ask if she’s a journalist then tell her that you’re a poor student in applied mathematics and social sciences, and you laugh at your own spinelessly unspoken humor, which makes her walk away.

Inspired by Mourning

You carry your glass to a room that you couldn’t see earlier from the guest-list desk and a woman sitting on the couch in there waves at you. It’s the acquaintance who’d asked you to be her plus one, whom you’d forgotten about and whose name you should have dropped from the get-go. You didn’t see me when you came in a while ago, she says, as you faites la bise, and you tell her about the trouble you had getting into the exclusive private party at the secret location. You mean here? she says, that’s strange, but it’s good that they know you now, you’ll want to be on their good side. Contemplating that you reach toward the plate of flower-topped canapés that’s just been placed on the coffee table before you but a young woman stops you with a shark’s smile so that she can take a picture before you destroy the plate’s symmetry, leading you to conclude that you’ve either just taken your first steps into being initiated among the Illuminati or this is a primer event for influencers with under a thousand followers.

You and your non-plus-one talk a bit about Notre-Dame, and she tells you that she couldn’t bear to look at it burning and that she doesn’t want to drop a bombshell on you but her father died the other day, but it’s okay, I mean it’s not okay, but he died, I’m here, he was 87, it’s alright, I’m glad I came out. You sympathize and let her know that you know it’s tough and that it’s good she came out this evening, you’re glad to see her, to have a drink together. You’re engaging without being intimate, and she understands that her sadness is her sadness, not yours, and you’re cool with letting her talk about it if she wants or not talk about it if she doesn’t want, and when she says that she visited Notre-Dame just the other day after learning that her father had died because he was Catholic, you almost put your arm around her but instead say It’s good you did that. A pause follows, and after a moment you ask which wine she’s been drinking and she looks at her nearly empty glass and says the Saint Emilion, it’s quite good, and you say you’re going to try some and would she want anything while you’re at the bar and she says she’d like to try the rosé, would you mind getting her a glass.

Inspired by More Wine

In the short line at the bar you try to have two conversations about the wine but neither the man ahead of you nor the woman behind seems interested. You wonder who these people are but the answer is clear: they’re people just like you who showed up because they were invited, and you further wonder if maybe more beautiful people were due to show up but thought it inappropriate to go to a wine tasting while Notre-Dame smolders, but still, why is no one interested in communication even if they don’t pick up on your Belmondo look?

You return to the mourner and hand her the glass of rosé, for which she thanks you, and the two of you have an insightful conversation about the wine and food and journalism/influencer business—yours, hers, theirs. The two of you have a good laugh—well, you laugh, she’s not really in the mood—about the tagline “inspired by Haut-Brion” on each of the Clarendelle wines because it’s such a ballsy way of saying “the producer of this wine owns Haut-Brion, one of the world’s most prestigious wine châteaux, so consider yourself lucky to get this close to the real thing,” but what the hell, it’ll surely work in wine marketing among a certain set, and the Saint Emilion really is quite decent, nearly elegant, just trying too hard to be something it’s not – Haut-Brion, for example. But what do you know? The rosé is quite nice, she remarks, she who has had Haut-Brion before.

Eventually you both get up to go to the bar to try the sweet “amberwine,” grabbing canapés along the way, and, new glass in hand, your drinking companion is thoughtful enough to introduce you to a friendly member of the Paris PR team who says how pleased she is that you could come, asks for your card and, unaware that you’ve already met her less welcoming colleague, re-introduces you to the midsize brunette who still thinks that it’s a good idea to half-apologize for not letting you in immediately because it’s a private party. The amberwine is pleasingly sweet and smooth, something to enjoy with friends rather than the PR team, so you and your soirée companion return to the other room and take a seat. Dessert canapés are promptly set before you.

You talk some more about Notre-Dame, and you tell her about your interviews with NBC 10 Philadelphia and the Catholic publication and remark that if you’d only learn to express sadness, fear, anger, despair or hope on cue you might get more airtime and print space, and she says, Well, men aren’t very good with emotion, and you say, No, that’s not it, they all want you to say how you feel but never how you relate, who are you with respect to this?, what is this with respect to you?, isn’t that the question? Besides, we live in Paris, where everything’s going to be alright, and you both take a final sip of your smooth amberwine.

As you’re leaving, the friendly half of the PR team practically dances over to tell you both how glad she is that you could come—if there were more people here with her enthusiasm it might have felt more like a party—and gives you “a little gift” which is actually quite generous: a box of three bottles of Clarendelle wine inspired by Haut-Brion. It feels like a first key to a series of locks that will eventually lead you to drinking Haut-Brion (inspired by itself) from a holy grail saved from the fire at Notre-Dame.

Once outside you say good-bye to your acquaintance-cum-friend, adding a final word of sympathy and expressing hope to see each other again soon, with a bise.

Inspired by Nudity

Alone on Rue de Sévigné you consider the various paths home. If you weren’t carrying a box of wine you’d go over to see Notre-Dame, a 10-minute walk from there, but heavy gift in hand you elect to return the same way you came, along Rue des Francs Bourgeois toward the Rambuteau metro, and when you arrive at the corner of the Carnavalet Museum and the Paris Historical Library, one of the most expressive corners of the Marais, you notice coming in the opposite direction, an old acquaintance whom you haven’t seen in years.

Hey, it’s been a while, you tell each other, and you faites la bise and ask each other what you’ve been up to this evening, and you tell him that that you’ve just come from private party at a secret location nearby and he says that he’s just had dinner with one of his nude models, because it turns out that he no longer runs an art gallery but is a photographer particularly inspired by nudity and it turns out that you are too, just not as a photographer.

You were introduced a long time ago by a mutual friend because he’s American, you’re American, he runs an art gallery, you work in tourism, but you’ve probably only met four or five times, when he invited you to an opening at the gallery or, as here, by accident in the street, so you never really knew each other, yet you find yourselves chatting away like old friends catching up after many years. For 45 minutes you swap stories at the corner when he suddenly says, You look great in that light, can I take your picture?, don’t move, and you don’t move, except to follow his instructions to face that way, now turn your eyes to me, now hold it, hold it, I’m waiting for the rabbi to get closer, he looks like you, don’t turn to him, hold it, stay with me, hold it, great!

You ask him to send you the picture so that you can see if you look more like Belmondo in that Belmondo movie or like a rabbi in this Marais street, and you talk some more under the Paris light at the picture-perfect corner of Rue Pavée and Rue des Francs Bourgeois, eventually exchanging phone numbers and promises to get together soon, maybe do a photo shoot, ending with a bise.

Inspired by Home

As you reach Rue des Archives you see coming up the street the number 75 bus which can carry you home, so you hail it down at the stop and hop on, say bonsoir to the bus driver, ding your Navigo, slide into a seat by the window and reach for your phone to check the feed but don’t take it out because what more do you need from the world right now?, and WTF, you live in Paris, you’ve been told you look like Belmondo, you’ve been told you look like a rabbi, you’ve been given three bottles of Clarendelle wine, you might someday pose in the nude (again), you aren’t in mourning, Notre-Dame is going to be alright, you’re headed home, and if someone were to ask how you feel right now you’d say Inspired.

© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Still Life in Paris, Inspired by Notre-Dame appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Lectures and events from Feb. 6 to Feb. 20

On Feb. 6 at 10:00 a.m. Gary will present to the Alliance Française in Doylestown, PA, a program entitled L’histoire et le patrimoine juifs à Paris (Jewish Heritage and History in Paris). This lecture will be presented in French. Contact the Alliance Française at afdoyletown@gmail.com for details.

On Feb. 7 at 7:00 p.m. Gary will discuss the American presence in France during the First World War and during the post-war reconstruction period of the 1920s as he examines sights that can be visited in the Paris region and in northeast France. This free program, entitled American First World War Memories in France, 1917-1918, will be held at the Lawrence Public Library Headquarters Branch, 2751 Brunswick Pike, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648. Registration is suggested by calling 609-883-8294 or emailing lawprogs@mcl.org.

On Feb. 10 Gary will present A Jewish Tour of Paris: An Exploration of Jewish Heritage and History at 2:00 p.m. at Beth El Synagogue, 375 Stony Hill Rd. in Yardley, PA. A $5 donation is suggested for non-members. Register online or by calling the synagogue at 215-493-1707.

On Feb. 13 at 7:30 p.m. Gary will present The Cycling Traveler: Biking in France at Sourland Cycles in Hopewell, NJ. He will explain how to match your cycling level and travel rhythm with your desire to explore the pleasures and treasures of France. Gary will cover routes of interest to easy-going leisure bikers, to family with teens, and to experienced road cyclists seeking challenging ride, including the Paris region, the Loire Valley, Normandy, Burgundy, and Provence. See here for details.

On Feb. 19 at 7:00 p.m. Gary returns to the subject of American First World War memories in France while also speaking about the significance of American philanthropy and culture in post-war France in a presentation at the The College of New Jersey. His lecture American First World War and Post-War Memories in France, 1917-1928 will be held at the college’s library auditorium. It is free and open to the general public. The College of New Jersey, 2000 Pennington Rd, Ewing Township, NJ 08618. (Read this article from the student paper published after this lecture.)

On Feb. 20 at 7:00 p.m. Gary presents A Toast to the History of the Wines of Burgundy and Champagne at the East Brunswick Public Library, 2 Jean Walling Civic Center in East Brunswick, NJ. Gary will introduce the audience to the astounding cast of characters, the regions, and the grapes that helped create two of the world’s most evocative names in wine and also give tips for visiting Burgundy and Champagne. See here for details.

Additionally, on the afternoons of Feb. 17, Gary will host private events in Ewing, NJ for those planning a trip to France within the next 18 months. The number of participants for each date is limited to 20. Email Gary directly at gary@francerevisited.com with your travel dates, interests and phone number, along with information about your travel party, if interested in attending.

Throughout this period, from February 6 to 20, Gary will be available for private consultations with those planning on visiting France in 2019. Email Gary to schedule a meeting.

About Gary Lee Kraut

Gary Lee Kraut has been inspiring and informing travelers to France for three decades. Originally from Mercer County, New Jersey, he is an award-winning Paris-based travel writer and the editor of the web magazine France Revisited, www.francerevisited.com, and author of the critically acclaimed guide “Paris Revisited: The Guide for the Return Traveler.” His unparalleled experience and knowledge as a France travel and tour specialist has also made him the go-to guy for individuals and travel professionals seeking highly personalized tours, advice and tailor-made events in Paris and throughout France (www.garysparistours.com).

Gary has lectured extensively in the United States and France, often using stories and insights from his travel, touring, and expatriate experiences to reveal how our most rewarding travel experiences are ones in which we find a personal connection with our route or destination. He has also lectured about travel writing, wine regions and American war sites in France. Directly and through top-flight travel agents he has assisted hundreds of travelers seeking highly personalized advice on traveling in France.

###

U.S. media contact:
Beth Brody
Brody PR
beth@brodypr.com
908-295-0600

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We gather here today to recognize and affirm our place in the world. In our halting quest for peace, freedom, happiness, prosperity and the well-being of our loved ones, we gather not to walk lock-step towards a single destination, but to wherever our interests, whims and desires may lead us, without willful harm to others. Where are we? Where are we going? Let us consider:

You know you’re in Paris when:

… you’re on a bike, one foot to the ground, waiting for people to cross the street and for the light to change, and a man teeters over to you, drunk.He says, “I won’t ask you for a little change to buy something to drink.”
“Why not?,” you ask.
“Because you’re North African and you don’t drink.”
“And if I told you that I do drink?”
“Can you give me some change?”

You know you’re in southeast France when:

… you understand that the association of food and drink with place is what most marks market-based gastronomy.
Read here for the theory: Market Day in France.
Read here for the bulls, lemons, olives, figs, cheese, honey and wine: Market Day in the Southeast: Provences-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.

You know you’re headed somewhere in the so-called middle of nowhere when:

… your friends say, “Why are you going there, to raise sheep?”
France Revisited takes pleasure in revealing the somewhere of such nowheres, and there is nowhere more somewhere in Creuse, in central France, than the small town of Aubusson, world famous for its 500 years of tapestry-making.

You know you’re in Paris’s 10th arrondissement when:

… you’re following these bar-hopping footsteps in a sliver of the tenth.

***

Having recognized our place in the world and in order to better it, let us herald this new era, you are cordially invited to two inaugural events in Paris:

1. An inaugural cocktail walk with I DRiNK PARiS, a daily sip of the City of Light. Wed. Jan. 25, 6-8pm.
What is I DRiNK PARiS? I DRiNK PARiS explores wine, cocktails, beer, spirits, coffee, tea, hot chocolate and more and the people, pleasures and places that go with them. By the way, if you can take photos and tell a good story at the same time I DRiNK PARIS is looking for contributors.

2. An inaugural public reading of Paris Vignettes entitled “7 Writers Walk into a Bar.” Mon. Jan. 30, 7-8:30pm.
What are vignettes? Short pieces of writing that examine transformative moments of love, loss, joy and personal insight.
What is Paris Vignettes? A vibrant weekly writing workshop in… Paris.
On Jan. 30 Elizabeth Neylon, Christine Hennebique, Niamh Tixier, Alice Evleth, Patricia Wilson, Natalie Fynn and I read (in English) from our recent works. The reading will be held at upstairs at Falstaff, a café at 10-12 place de la Bastille, near rue de la Roquette. While admission is free and open to the public, attendees are each expected to purchase a drink.

Welcome to a new era on France Revisited.

Happy travels always,

Gary

Gary Lee Kraut
Editor, France Revisited
www.francerevisited.com
gary [at] francerevisited.com

The post France Revisited Newsletter: The Inauguration Issue appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Corinne earned the “Regard de la presse étrangère” award for her article Château de Beauregard: A Castle Road Less Taken published on France Revisited in May 2015. The award includes a prize of 1500 euros.

Brava Corinne! Looking forward to seeing more of your terrific and perceptive work on France Revisited in 2016.

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My mother had been watching CNN the past few days, and she occasionally called me (or not) following the initial attack on Charlie Hebdo. So I called her from the square to ask if she was watching just then because if so she would see me standing next to Amanpour. Instead she was making Farina. “Just a minute,” she said. She switched off the stove and turned on the TV.

“OK,” she said, “I’m on CNN. They’re showing Natanyahu in a synagogue in Paris. You don’t go to synagogue now, do you?”

In front of Amanpour and her cohort (and in front of me) were a large news camera and a cameraman while slightly to the left a small screen showed what was on CNN at that moment. It showed Israeli Prime Minister Natanyahu at the Grand Synagogue in Paris.

“No,” I said. “Wait and you’ll see them cut back to Amanpour and the square where I am.”

In a moment CNN was back on the square. I could see Amanpour and her cohort on the screen. Amanpour began speaking.

“I can see her now,” my mother said. “She’s with what’s his name.”

“Can you see me behind them?”

“I see a black fellow. I haven’t seen you for a while but you aren’t black now, are you?”

Indeed, there was a black fellow standing behind to Amanpour and it wasn’t me. Amanpour and her cohort were on a slightly raised platform so one had to be directly behind the reporters and taller than me in order to be seen on the screen. I was to the side.

I moved closer to the action and raised my hand. I said to my mother, “Can you see my hand?”

“Are you wearing a black glove?”

“Yes.”

“Then I can see you. Can you do better?”

“No, they’re too high up, with people right behind them.”

The screen cut then back to Natanyahu in the synagogue.

My mother said, “That’s nice, Gary, but I can’t go around telling people that my son’s hand was on CNN.”

* * *

Over the next few days I received e-mails from relatives saying, “I hear your hand was on CNN.”

I checked the site stats for France Revisited that week, not to see the effect of my hand coup but to see if my recent posts about the attacks and their aftermath had had an effect on the number of visitors. There had indeed been a slight increase. There was naturally a lot of clicking on France titles during that period, whether revisited or not.

I didn’t return to the stats for a while because when you operate a website such as this checking site stats is like weighing yourself: you’re tempted to do it every day but doing so is unhealthy because basically you either feel good about yourself or you don’t.

I was in the U.S. in February giving lectures, visiting family and showing my mother that I had become neither black nor religious. Upon my return to Paris in early March I wanted to see if my little lecture tour and the surrounding publicity had had an effect on the number of visitors to France Revisited. I’d hoped to find a small increase for the month but what I saw was a tsunami. On one day alone in February the site had received 3.8 million hits. I figured that could only mean cyber attack. But examining the statistics further I saw that that it had in fact been direct human activity—if you can call those who willingly click on thousands of links a day human. Those hit had come thanks to a “redditor” who suggested to reddit.com readers that they might be interested in an interview I’d conducted with the author of a book-in-progress about Quentin Roosevelt. As a collateral reward, money poured in from readers clicking on Google-operated ad banners on the site (see them?). Within two days the number of hits and ad clicks had returned to their more usual happy-go-luck levels, levels that are nothing to scoff at but which, in view of the Reddit spike, made the graphs for February look like an EKG showing one final heartbeat before death.

Neverthless, In March I got another albeit softer heartbeat from Reddit along with tremors from a few others sources, and a major communications agency was interested in purchasing a photograph I’d taken.

I used to think that every little bit helps, but was beginning to think to hell with little bits I want major recognition.

* * *

Last week, more than three months after my hand appeared on CNN, I received a message from The New York Times bearing the subject heading “NYT Travel: ‘The Europe Issue.’” It was a personally addressed message that began “Hi Gary.” Scrolling to the signature I saw that it was from The Times’s communications manager.

Recognition, I thought, it’s arrived. I was flattered. I imagined that I was being contacted as a leading American expert on travel in France to provide an insightful quote for an upcoming article. I was on a roll.

I then read the message in full and discovered that I wasn’t being asked for a quote but for something possibly even more flattering. The communications manager wasn’t contacting me because of my personal expertise, but, better yet, because I’m the editor of an award-winning online travel magazine.

Well, he didn’t exactly write “award-winning” in his message, but why else would he be writing to ask for my assistance in publicizing The Times’s then upcoming (April 19th) “Europe Issue”?

Well, he wasn’t exactly “asking” either. But he concluded his description of “The Europe Issue” by saying “If you’d like to embed the 36 Hours video in any coverage, the code is below,” and that’s nearly the same as asking me to publicize The New York Times’s coverage of my backyard, just without a question mark. It’s a bit passive-aggressive but there you have it.

It’s like the time a celebrity smiled at me at a cocktail party. I thought there might be some personal connection going on until I realized that she was smiled at me because I had a bottle of champagne in my hand and she wanted me to pour her some without having to ask, since asking would be a form of subservience with possible answers including “No” or “It’ll cost you” or “Yes, if you’ll sleep with me.”

Since the communications manager didn’t put a question mark in his message I was unable to respond with any of those possible answers.

I hesitated, unsure if embedding with the NY Times would set a bad precedent for France Revisited. I wouldn’t want us to get a reputation as an easy web magazine willing to embed with just anyone simply because they’ve created a slick video about Paris with a few attractive clichés and some come-hither quotes and images. Next thing you know the Wall Street Journal and Condé Nast Traveler will be asking to embed with our savvy readers and experienced travelers, the kind they can only dream of reaching without my assistance.

Nevertheless, aware that every little bit does help, I’ve decided to give The Times the visibility they crave. I by no means endorse what’s in this video, and I suppose I should add the disclaimer that a friend of mine appears in it.

Now that I’ve had my hand on CNN and gotten embed with The New York Times, I am reminded of what I was thinking as I filled the celebrity’s glass of champagne: a relationship’s got to start somewhere, right?

Gary Lee Kraut, April 20, 2015

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1. I don’t immediately type up my notes. They languish in notebooks that can contain observations, ideas and details on countless subjects for weeks, months, even longer, until I’m ready to use some, trash others and leave others to languish further.

2. I lose my notebooks. I left one on a plane in February when I arrived in New Jersey where I was to begin a lecture tour. The notebook contained notes for lectures, from an interview I’d conducted in Paris two days earlier and who know what else.

I started another notebook when I returned to Paris a month ago, and yesterday I lost that.

I was taking it with me when going to attend a lecture at the Museum of Jewish Art and History about the construction of 19th-century synagogues in the Marais. I placed the notebook—a green hard-covered notebook with a pen stuck into the spine—in the basket of a public bike, a Velib, and I specifically told myself to remember to take it with me when I parked.

I dropped the bike off at a station several blocks from the museum, then walked. As I approached the museum I began pulling things out of my pockets for their security purposes so as to place on the machine along with my notebook…

Damn! I’d left the notebook in the Velib basket. I ran back to where I’d left off the bike. No more than ten minutes had transpired since I’d parked, so I figured that if that bike was still there then the notebook would be too. Rounding the corner I was relieved to see that there was a bike where I’d left mine and that there was something in its basket. But as I closed in I saw that instead of it being my notebook with the green cover and the pen sticking in the spine there was a pile of pages torn from a notebook. On closer inspection I saw that the pages were filled front and back with my handwriting.

Across the street there was a man sitting in a van, looking at me as I looked at him. He had the expectant yet troubled expression of someone who’s trying to decide whether or not to make a confession.

Beside the van was a garbage can. I crossed the street and looked into the can. Not that I thought the notebook might be in there but I wanted to be close enough to simply turn to the man in the van—his window was partly open—and ask: “Did you see someone take a notebook from that bicycle basket?”

From his troubled expression I actually expected him to pick my notebook up from the passenger seat and hand it to me.

But what troubled him wasn’t my notebook by rather his French—it was sparse. He said: “He” (meaning someone) “take notebook go in street there, there” (indicating left and right).

“A thief,” I said, half-heartedly.

The man in the van shrugged. He’d seen worse.

I had too, but still! I’d been gone barely 10 minutes. Who would take a notebook from a bicycle basket and leave behind the used pages?

I was upset that someone had taken my notebook, upset at myself for leaving it in the basket, upset that I was going to miss the lecture since I now didn’t feel like running to the museum without a notebook and pen.

But I did have my notes. And I had a dozen empty notebooks at home, gifts from tourist officials, the covers marked with logos for Burgundy, Poitou-Charentes, Champagne La Marne, etc. And the thief wouldn’t have known that I’d only been gone a few minutes. He would have been walking down the street, seen a nice-looking notebook in a public bicycle basket, looked around for its owner and seen no one but a fellow in a van who would have shrugged helplessly.

The thief would have given a brief flip through the notebook to see if there was any indication who it belonged to, and finding none he would have thought it a shame to let a forgotten notebook go to waste. Skies were grey, it might rain, he would have thought, and then the notebook would be ruined for both finder and owner. And if it didn’t rain, and in the unlikely situation that the owner did return, then the owner would still have his foreign scribbles. So he tore them out, left them in the basket, and sauntered off down the street before turning left or right.

In that case, this was a respectable thief.

Come to think of it, he wasn’t a thief at all. He was a writer.

I went home and wrote the above. And while I had the momentum I decided to write up some of the notes on the loose papers I now had, beginning with the page entitled:

Notes for “April in Paris” France Revisited Newsletter announcing seven recent posts.

1. The Rooftops of Paris
In recent months the most attractive view over Paris has been from District Hall of the 9th arrondissement, where District Mayor Delphine Bürkli is spearheading the committee to present the rooftops of the capital as a candidate for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Read about that here.

2. The Giant Colon
One thing that France will definitely not get World Heritage Listing for is its pink blow-up colon, which you might have missed last week in Paris on Place de la Republique. If you feel that you missed something, you can see it here.

3. The Rising Edge of Paris
Meanwhile, journalist Corinne LaBalme, who lives in the Batignolles Quarter of Paris’s 17th arrondissement, puzzles over the construction of a 525-foot glass tower that will become the centerpiece of a 123-acre development on the northeastern edge of the city. Read more here.

4. French personal hygiene
In art news, Corinne also tells about a delightfully exhibitionistic exhibition running through July 5 in Paris’s Marmottan-Monet Museum that examines French personal hygiene (and lack of) through the ages. (Spoiler alert: Lots of dirty pictures!) Read more here.

5. Movie Review: Suite Française
Suite Française by Irene Némirovsky took the literary world by storm when it was first published in France in 2004, followed up with an English translation in 2006. Now comes the movie, which I review here.

6. International Jazz Day
In other UNESCO news, Paris has been selected to serve as the 2015 Global Host City for the fourth annual International Jazz Day, celebrated around the world on April 30. See how Paris takes center stage on Jazz Day here.

7. April in Paris
I know, I know, you’re as unlikely to attend that jazz concert as you are to have seen the Giant Colon. But from where you sit you can now listen to rendition of “April in Paris”—actually, nine renditions. Have a listen here.

And as you listen remember to hold your loved ones close… and your notebooks closer.

Happy travels always,

Gary

April 3, 2015

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