To the old man behind the Notre Dame
You couldn’t have known, as I stood there under the light Paris drizzle, that my heart was drowning in a sea of grief. You were making your way out of the Square Jean XXIII; I was standing near the gate. My ears were pounding, my hands were shaking, and I’m afraid I didn’t bother to […]
Europe for the Heartbroken: 7 Perfect Places for Healing from a Broken Heart (1/7)
(This may or may not be based on personal experience.) * I don’t know how many people travel to deal with a heartbreak but I suspect…quite a lot. It’s the slighly more expensive version of cutting one’s hair into a drastically short bob or dyeing it into a shocking shade of blond. There’s the appeal, […]
Bare
* * I had been here before, only 2 years and 3 months past, but it feels like a lifetime ago. The Seine then had been lined by stately trees adorned in the glorious colors of fall. Now the same trees are pale and bare, their branches thrown upwards in seeming surrender to a gray […]
Love at First Sight: Paris
_ By the time I’d asked the bus driver how much the fare was to Pont de Rungis… * Excusez-moi, monsieur. Combien?* _ …and bought two RER C tickets to the 7th arrondissement… * Bonjour madam! Champ de Mars, deux billet. _ …I felt like my entire supply of French had run out. For months I […]
3 Things That Will Surprise You About Paris
* * 1. The French are nice. * Parisians in particular have a reputation for being aloof and snobbish, and as tourists from a third-world country, we were prepared to be ignored or looked down on. Surprisingly, none of the French people we met were even remotely rude. Hotel receptionists were friendly and helpful. An […]