Notre Dame

One of my favorite places in the world is gone.

I'm crying while I watch the news. Notre Dame survived the Revolution, the Commune, the Occupation, and now it's been destroyed by a fire. I've been there so many times; it's always been the first place I go whenever I'm in Paris. The interior never failed to soothe and inspire -- that hushed darkness, lit by those magnificent windows.

I took this picture in 2017 -- it does not capture their beauty, but today I'm grateful to have it.

Au revoir

The Tour Eiffel through the web of trees by Place de la Concorde.

I'm at Roissy, waiting for my flight home. It feels as though it's been months since I was in Abu Dhabi but it's only been a little more than two weeks. I have more than a thousand pictures to go through, and I'll be posting them over the next several weeks.

I'm still sorry I didn't get to Ethiopia but it's hard to imagine it could have been better than this trip.

Last day

It was pouring when I woke up yesterday morning, but by the time I'd had breakfast and dressed it was steady rain, and by the time I'd finished my Starbucks latte, it had stopped.

But it was gray and gloomy all day -- here's a view I couldn't resist while walking along the Seine to the Orangerie. It wasn't cold enough to stop me going to the Île Saint-Louis to buy an ice cream at Berthillon, so I had sustenance on the way and my personal Paris food trifecta was complete (baguette with butter and jam, croque-madame, Berthillon ice cream.)

I've eaten at many fine restaurants here on previous visits and they're amazing but this is the food I crave in Paris.

Clocks

This is too easy as a subject, but that doesn't mean it's not irresistible -- the views behind and through the giant clocks at the Musée d'Orsay.

You can see Sacré-Coeur in the distance on the left.

Musée d'Orsay

This is where I spent most of yesterday. When you're tired of looking at art, you can go to the cafe and have tea and cake, or sit in a comfy leather sofa by a window and read for a while (both of which I did.)

I love the architecture of this building as much as I love the art -- the old bones of the railway station it was originally, gilt and frou-frou beautifully restored, with the very modern galleries and staircases within. It's a tension that seems to enhance the art rather than detract from it, if that makes any kind of non-pretentious sense.

Another good reason to come to Paris in February -- this museum is always crowded, but there was actually room to breathe yesterday, to occasionally be the only person in a room looking at a painting.

And though it was drizzling when I finally left, it wasn't that cold, and I had a pleasant walk back to my hotel, stopping at a cafe for a croque-madame on Poilâne bread with salad. It's not haute cuisine, but it's one of my favorite things to eat in Paris.

Saturday reflections

Traditional Parisian facades reflected in the window of a modern art/furnishings showroom on the rue de Lille.

Paris

 Because who doesn't enjoy a good gargoyle?

Paris, and everything is easy. Somewhere on my way into or out of Beirut (where it turned out I had to go through yet another security checkpoint, including frisking, to get from the lounge to the plane) I found myself wishing I was flying to New York, that I had just planned to stay a few more days in Jordan and gone home from there, instead of stopping off in Paris.

I've changed my mind. Paris is never a bad idea, even in February. I love that it's still full of charming little hotels like the one I'm staying in near the Jardin du Luxembourg, with flowered drapes and quilted bedspreads and flowerpots outside the windows. And of course, baguettes with butter and jam served with cafe au lait in a breakfast room with small round tables with floor-length tablecloths and fresh flowers. Even a fellow guest who hums loudly while reading Le Figaro at the next table can't distract from the perfection that is a fresh French baguette -- when I was thinking about how I wanted to spend the day, I considered finding a bakery and just sitting on a bench eating bread until I either exploded or had to leave for the airport.

Instead, I went to Notre Dame, because I always go to Notre Dame. I am not such a traditionalist that I was dismayed to find a Starbucks on the way, a new development since the last time I was here eight years ago. Because while there may be many experiences that aren't enhanced by having a large cup of hot coffee in your possession, it turns out that walking through the Left Bank on a pleasant winter's morning isn't one of them.

Urban poetry

Okay, maybe not urban poetry in the sense I generally use, but even after living in New York for decades, I still get a thrill whenever I catch a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty in the harbor.

So here's an old picture from her baby book -- 1884 in Paris,  when she was still in pieces and her copper skin hadn't yet acquired that green patina.

Paris 1958 (Travel Flashback)

I'm guessing that my sister is about six months old in this picture, which makes it the fall of 1958. We were living in Paris, where my father was stationed with the Marines. I like my mother's dress -- it was not a style she would have worn later -- and I'm struck by how tired she looks, but I find it hard to see much beyond my enormous feet. Maybe I was wearing extra big shoes to grow into, or maybe the angle just exaggerates their size, but those are definitely significant feet. I guess I should consider myself lucky that they only grew to size 9 1/2.

Paris 1995 (Travel Flashback)

Laurie posing in the rain by the grave of Sarah Bernhardt in June 1995. Sarah Bernhardt had been one of her family nicknames, and I am very confident that Laurie will more than hold her own in any Drama Queen Deathmatches that may be taking place in the afterlife.

Spending a week together in Paris was one of the things we had always talked about and finally did. She'd spent two weeks driving around Bourgogne and the Loire with her boyfriend at the time (whom I now always fondly refer to as the Dickhead), and I was on my way home after a couple of months in Eastern Europe. The three of us dined extravagantly at le Grand Véfour and family-style at Polidor, had cognacs at the Bar Hemingway at the Ritz, rented bicycles and rode around the gardens of Versailles in the rain, took a tacky boat tour on the Seine.

Then the Dickhead went home, and we stayed. We saw too much art, drank too much wine, went to cafes and cemeteries and cathedrals. It was Paris, and it was perfect.

My favorite picture from the trip isn't of any of those things, however. The first night we were both tired from lugging our baggage across the city to a new hotel and we ended up spending the evening in our room, reading. Which is how we had spent hundreds of evenings together, but we found it hilarious that after so many years of planning a Paris trip, we ended up deciding that all in all, we'd rather be reading.

On the back, I wrote Laurie and Kathy do Berkeley San Francisco New York Paris.

C'est plus qu'un crime, c'est une faute

I'm not very forgiving of mistakes, especially my own. But sometimes the wrong results turn out to be much more interesting, like this blurry accidental photo of the Paris sky at dusk, with the Tour Eiffel a tall vague presence off in the distance on the right.

I have some very nice "correct" pictures of the same view, and I'll never look at any of them twice.

I love Paris every moment, every moment of the year

Why oh why do I love Paris? That sky for one thing, and the way it's so strangely quiet in the Tuileries that you can literally hear a leaf fall. It's not silent: there's carousel music and children laughing and intense fashionistas ducking out of the show tents to scream Italian into their cell phones and the drone of traffic on the other side of the wall. But somehow it all fades into a pleasant background white noise and you can hear your fingers slide on paper as you turn the page of your book, and the creak of the bench as you shift your weight, and the soft tap, tap, tap of leaves falling to the ground.