SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10
A damp wooden desk pushed up against the vibrating window in the large glass balcony. The tiled floor was cold on my feet. Nearby, a pigeon perched next to a clay chimney. He gazed at me as if I were an intruder. I felt like I was drifting over the city in a cold air balloon slightly above the roofs. Rain fell persistently. We’ve been travelling for nearly two and a half months and the sun has shone constantly. Finally, rain. It felt relaxing, an excuse to slow down, linger inside. Our daily lives, filled with adventure and discovery, had moved at an unrelenting pace. Forward we went with little time to reflect. Dunkerque, Brussels, Amsterdam and now Paris. Nine days, three cities, two that were large and complex.
The street below was narrow and empty. Cars passed on the other side of the building, the sound of tires on a wet road rose the seven, tall flights. But the loudest sound was the thrash and patter of rain on glass, and an occasional gust of wind shaking the flimsy, thin, badly insulated windows. Paris was grey, grey clouds, grey dulled buildings, grey, wet streets and grey reflections in the many shut windows.
The rooftops spread out like a carpet, mostly old, a few new, shingled and arched, flat and black, dotted with clay chimneys. City buildings rose in the distance. Montmartre was at my back. Windows were mostly shuttered, some had tiny Juliet balconies, others wrought iron coverings. Though I wore several layers, including wool, the chill from the tiles crawled from my feet upward, and my face was cold from wind breaking through the old grout along the thin window.
REMEMBERING MY FIRST VISIT TO PARIS
When I first visited Paris as a young woman, I was travelling with a friend. We had been on the road for two months by the time we arrived. It was our last city before heading home – me to NYC, my friend to Austin, Texas. The sun and heat of Greece, our previous destination, and the knowledge that soon we would go home created a sense of ease when we reached Paris. We didn’t rush, so full were we of experiences from the other places we’d been — England, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy and Greece. Our first night, we found a Greek restaurant (I had fallen in love with Greece) and as the evening grew long, the restaurant owner, impressed with our enthusiasm for Greece, shut his restaurant, turned on music and the three of us drank and danced.
I was greeted by a bouquet of flowers the following morning. He was an older man and I was still very young. There was nothing romantic about the encounter. His gift of flowers was merely a simple gesture of thanks and joy.
After shopping for our groceries last night, I noticed a young man looking up at a window in our building. He held a bouquet of flowers. A lightness and happy anticipation was in his demeanor. I will always associate Paris with bouquets of flowers.
OFF WE GO
It was late when we left the apartment…thanks to the rain. Down the seven flights of stairs we went, arriving on the street at 1:30. Our goal was to make it to the Seine by walking along Canal St. Michael. The rain stopped and started and stopped again. Instead of pushing to get anywhere, we allowed ourselves to wander, crossing the metal bridges from one side of the small canal to the other, watching as water filled the channel to lift or drop a boat passing through.
LINNER OF SUPERFOOD
I was excited to find, after earlier online research, a healthy vegetarian restaurant for lunch or what had become known as linner (lunch/dinner). It was my way of letting Chloe know I respected her food choices and would even help find restaurants she would like. It turned out to be a superfood restaurant, which meant nothing to me.
As soon as we opened the door and entered the steamy hot, humid restaurant, a rotten vegetable and strange herb smell enveloped us. Low wicker tables were surrounded by thatched chairs with multi-colored silk cushions. Hippy, tye-dyed tapestries hung on the walls and in a window. A blond waiter with dreads and beads pointed to the chalked menu on the wall.
It wasn’t looking, or smelling, good. But I was positive and Chloe was trying to act appreciative. The food was worse than the smell, much worse. It tasted like eating the rotten vegetable in soil. Green powders, spirulina, and other weird stuff were mixed in with the mushy dabs of strangely colored and textured food (was it food?) on our plates. Chloe ate less than me.
I barely made it out of the restaurant before my gut totally exploded. My stomach cramped. We rushed back to the apartment. For the rest of the day and night, I had diarrhea and was in pain.
Lesson learned – Chloe needs to pick the restaurants.
