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Big talk, small table

Kathy and Ed in Paris

It’s another trip to Paris, and I’m different. Single now. Six years older. Living in a different US town. Not blogging everyday like in 2007. Not staying as long this time: five weeks instead of eight. Alone, except for the three-week visit of my middle son, who shared with me many long talks over espressos and cafes au lait at small tables. If lunch plates, water carafes, and bread baskets became involved, the tables shrank to tiny.

I’m distracted by emails with my online editing job this time and the probability that I’ll have to move my household again in December, something I’d just completed in July. I was able to take a train to Luxembourg to visit my friend Toshi. We took day trips to Germany and Belgium. When you live in a tiny country, you can do that. I wouldn’t call those day trips official country “bags,” but they were gastronomically and historically wonderful.

What is the same this trip is that I’m renting a small apartment again. On the Left Bank this time, between Gare d’Austerlitz and Jardin des Plantes. I still haven’t learned French, though my tourist phrases often seem enough. I mostly walk, avoiding the Metro. It was easy to do in August because Line 5 was being repaired and unavailable. One of the reasons I’d chosen this apartment was its proximity to the Line 5 Metro.

Paris is still fabulous and irritating, dirty and grand, noisy and spectacular, artsy and grungy, formal and romantic. Everything I seem to need.

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