I really did not want to come home. I can't believe it took me five million years to finally get to Paris and even after spending a week there, I feel like I only saw a teeny tiny slice. Everyone knows that Paris is beautiful and sure, I knew that too, but breathing it is very different from looking at photos.
We did not get to the Eiffel Tower, though we sure did enjoy looking at it. We rented a cute little apartment in Le Marais, and couldn't have been happier with our location. Our street, Rue Beautreillis (which I mangled so badly, even English-speaking cabbies couldn't understand WTF I was saying) was quiet and cobblestoned, just off a busier street, between Saint-Paul and the Bastille metro stations.
This door to nowhere was just down the street from our apartment. Around the corner from our place was one of the most charming things we saw, the Musée de la Magie (Museum of Magic). You go downstairs into this basement with vaulted ceilings and it's like you're walking into another world. Vaulted ceilings, antique magic tricks—we even saw a magic show. There's also a room full of automatons, which were just incredible.
We did actually leave our neighborhood, though we probably could've been happy spending the entire week exploring it. I have more photos on my Flickr page. I don't even have anything smart-alecky or obnoxious to say about the trip (and that kills me!), because the whole thing was so perfect.
This was definitely the most social vacation I've ever taken. My sister Sue and her man came in from London for a couple days. My friend Scarlett came close on their heels. We hung out with Carmine and Terry, who moved there from Brooklyn a few years ago and saw my friend Suzanne who I haven't seen since Provincetown a few years back.
Other highlights included the Salvador Dalí show at the Pompidou, along with well-worth-it-for-the-view expensive coffee on the roof, Pére LaChaise cemetery, where we saw Oscar Wilde's grave and this old Frenchman told us (via his friend who translated) that the reason the cross on the next grave was crushed was because some dope climbed on it to try and kiss Wilde's monument. The cross cracked and sent the dumbass to the hospital. We saw Michael Clark Company on Thanskgiving night, way out in the crazy suburbs of Paris. It was fantastic to see real dancers perform the same moves that me and my non-dancers had a great time mangling at the Whitney Biennial. We had to walk through a mall to get there and on our way back, all the stores were closed, but people were in the mall, practicing their breakdance moves! So crazy, unexpected and fun!
I mean, it was so jaw-droppingly beautiful that Spyro and I only argued once or twice—once when he told me he wants our next vacation to be to Hawaii (eww) and the other time on our massively long, airline-delayed trip home, which I'm willing to give us both a pass on. The only semi-bad thing that happened was that I left my Kindle behind on the plane and Air Canada has been too inept to find it. Even the Parisians were nice to us! I want to go back again immediately, but I'm also worried because now I have this perfect memory of an amazing trip. What if I step in dog shit, get pickpocketed, and have a Frenchman be rude to me next time?!
Glad you stayed with friends and kept it low-key. Hustling everywhere is no vacation.
Posted by: P | January 15, 2013 at 05:43 PM