Paris

I always refer to Paris as the significant other that I’ve never gotten over and would do anything to get back. I miss and think about her all the time and whenever someone tells me that they’re going there for a visit, I gasp a little and say, “Tell her I love and miss her!”

We spent four bitterly cold, but wonderful days walking around with no agenda—my favorite way to explore any city. We ate an award-winning croissant, visited the Picasso museum, took advantage of the January sales season at Les Halles, I was crowned reine during a little galette des rois celebration at a friend’s apartment, and I chatted up Colette, a regular at The Cambridge Public House who goes there every afternoon for her usual two-euro beer. (My kinda gal.)

We stayed in a friend’s studio which was a five-floor walk-up chambre de bonne right across the Seine from Notre Dame, which we could just glimpse from our tiny window. The ceiling sloped so you had to stoop in certain areas to avoid bumping your head, the bathroom was miniscule, and the sleeping loft was a little platform floating at mezzanine level at the highest point of the room. The place reminded me so much of the little chambre de bonne I lived in when I studied abroad in Paris twenty years ago, so I loved every bit of it: stairs, stooping, and all.