Saturday, September 22, 2007
In preparation for this trip I remember piling all my under things on my bed. The sock pile, however, was apparently a memory from another pack job, so I’ve worn this one wonderful pair of Thorlo walking socks for four days. Now a Parisian sock source needs to be found.
(Continued)
Friday, September 21, 2007
I’ve been above Paris in two ways: by book and by Eiffel Tower. The book Above Paris, with photographs by Robert Cameron and text by Pierre Salinger, is a collection of aerial photographs taken over Paris in 1984. The book includes historical maps and drawings, and is divided into sections on Paris, the periphery and the environs, and Ile de France (the region around Paris).
(Continued)
Thursday, September 20, 2007
The laptop was all hooked up, but the router wasn’t on. The proprietaire (landlord) called her computer expert friend Guilloume, who could come over after work.
Many times during that first afternoon afternoon, Barb and I insisted we’d know the answers to details of our discussions if only we’d been able to Google them. From where Anne Frank was born to how long Eisenhower was in the Phillipines before World War II, we missed our instant, worldwide Internet searching capabilities. We told ourselves that Hemingway and Kerouac had written with pencils and pens in notebooks and other tourists got information from books; it certainly wouldn’t kill us to not blog and actually look things up in travel books, or write postcards and actual letters.
(Continued)
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Sitting at the JFK airport gate waiting for the call to board for the flight to Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport, I already noticed a change from America to France . . . . and beyond
1. A woman continuously rubbing her husband’s shaved head.
2. A pigeon walking then flying through the concourse.
(Continued)
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
I’m sitting at one of Delta’s C gates in a plastic chair at Salt Lake City’s airport, bound for JFK. I look at what people are doing, carrying, engaged in, and wearing at my gate.
 1. Missionaries. The two women were dour and beaten-looking. The five men were excited and gregarious. Once we were on the C concourse, many of them were talking at the pay phones. One man said, “I’m excited, I’m scared, I’m all those emotions.”
(Continued)
Monday, September 17, 2007
My hands and fingers will be working hard the next couple of days. Schlepping, hauling, lifting, shoving, adjusting, shoehorning, pulling, and unpacking will all take their toll on the cuticles. My nails are clipped Martha-Stewart, farm-wife, 1940s-movie-star, working-girl, waitress short. I’ll wear a cheap watch between my elbows and fingertips. No rings, no bracelets, nothing to get in the way of travel-work.
(Continued)
Sunday, September 16, 2007
This is my fifth journey to Paris. I went in 1971 with my boyfriend who was escaping the VietNam draft. We flew into London from Los Angeles, and then got to Paris where we rented a fifth-floor, no-elevator, cold-water apartment with Turkish toilets. I was going to work as a maid. That plan lasted two weeks and then I hitchhiked to Spain.
(Continued)
Saturday, September 15, 2007
There’s an uncomfortable window of vulnerability right before a big trip. A vulnerability that warns, “Don’t lose your credit card or get in a car accident. Don’t wrench your back. Don’t poke yourself in the eye. Don’t get sick. Don’t make mistakes.”
(Continued)
Friday, September 14, 2007
So here we go back to that funny centigrade business. For two months I’ll be adjusting to those scary low numbers, feeling like I’m back in Nome, Alaska, as I get used to seeing and hearing centigrade instead of fahrenheit temperatures.
(Continued)
Thursday, September 13, 2007
I just bought travelers cheques to pay my Parisian rent. In five days, Madame Vier, my landlord, will be expecting me to sign them over to her for the rest of my first-month’s rent, the security deposit, and the last month’s rent. (I’ll also have to pay telephone and electricity charges.) With the dollar down to 72 cents to the euro, the amount of US dollars I had to pay to buy all those euros was numbing. I stood at the Wells Fargo teller’s window and signed my name 48 times on those cheques. The dollar’s way down: what a terrible time to go to Paris.
(Continued)
