Dublin

Two days ago, I was walking along the Seine. Yesterday and today, I am walking along the Liffey, the river that figures prominently in the work of James Joyce and, because of that holds a mythic status for me. Like the Seine, the Liffey too has many bridges, including a new one called the James Joyce Bridge designed by the somewhat dazzling Spanish architect Calitrava. I made a point to walk down the quayside to see it today.

Within my first hour of arriving in Ireland, the white-haired Irish gentleman taking bus tickets at the Dublin Airport said softly under his breath, when I expressed concern that he had dispossessed me of the return portion of my round-trip ticket, "We must have hope and faith." Are the fairies trying to give me a message, I wondered? He then handed me my return ticket.

I'm staying at a B&B in South Dublin, a large three-story house with elegant dark-rose walls and a brightly painted yellow door with a shiny brass knocker. Marie MacMahon, the owner, raised her children in this house and I took to her immediately. No doubt that's why I had such a good night's sleep. At breakfast this morning, I met two of the other guests: Nick, who's here to play the tuba for a Dublin orchestra, and Theresa, who shared with me her perspective on the long relationship between Ireland and England. She quoted Cromwell having said this about the Irish: "Go to hell or to Connaught," the rocky west coast soil of Connaught offering little hope at that time. (Cromwell is decidedly not popular in Ireland.)
For breakfast, Marie offered me a "fry," which I believe is a traditional Irish breakfast of eggs, sausage or bacon, and potatos. I opted for muesli, toast with homemade blackcurrant jam, and very good tea. (Marie was careful to credit her sister for the jam.)

Ireland speaks of its "soft rain." Well, it was softly raining this morning, so I was glad I had packed an umbrella, in spite of the added weight. To get to Dublin center from the house, it's either a fifteen or twenty minute walk or you can take a bus that stops just up the block. I've already done both. Yesterday, I was a bit lost making my way back home on foot when an Irish fellow on a mountain bike came to my rescue. Daniel Curran. We had a cup of tea and then took a walk along a nearby canal, before he walked me home. I told him Daniel was my father and brother's name and that Curran is the last name of one of my best friends. He gave me his phone number.

It's the end of the day now. I'm sitting in an Internet Cafe with a dozen other people tapping away on the keys just like I am. (The keyboard is back to normal, at least my version of normal.) Just like in Paris, I've been walking all day: A historical walking tour that started and ended at Trinity College, and then a different kind of tour at Kilmainham Gaol where twelve leaders of the Easter Rising were executed. Bullet marks from the struggle are still evident in the columns in front of Dublin's main post office, which served as the headquarters for the men fighting for freedom from English rule. From beginning to end, today has been deeply moving and satisfying for me.

Early tomorrow morning, I'm launching myself into the countryside and driving from the east to the west coast. May the fairies be with me.

PS France

This morning, Scott and I watched the sunrise from the car as we drove to the Beauvais airport, where I caught a RyanAir flight to Dublin. So here I am sitting in an internet cafe on Dublin's famous O'Connell Street, named after the Irish revolutionary Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), because there's a loose end from France that needs tying up: our two days in the Loire Valley. We visited two of the grandest chateau, including Chambord - I learned the meaning of a castle "keep." The whole group of us - Scott, Christine, Mathieu, Alexandre, and me - then accepted the dinner invitation of a formidable and beautiful restauranteur named Birgitte, whose very special restaurant called La Marine in a small village and secreted under a stand of trees alongside a canal of the Loire River. We ate better than kings and queens, all seven of us, including Birgitte and her most lovely daughter Diane (pronounced "dee-ON") who joined us. Birgitte's younger daughter Fanny had stayed with me for a week in Santa Monica this summer, and this sumptious feast was Birgitte's abundant thank you. I had Mignons of Pork with champignons. We were also invited to spend the night, as Birgitte is also becoming a hotelier as well as restaurant owner. My rooms were an apartment adjacent to the restaurant; I slept in a canopied bed with the river canal outside the window. Everyone else stayed at Birgitte's remarkable 17th century couvent (convent), one wing of which she has transformed into her home, the other which she is transforming into a series of apartments. Between the two wings stands a chapel and a clock tower. The entrance sign reads: "Monastere de la Visitation Sainte Mare de la Bretauche - La Chapelle et les Parloirs." The convent was once the property of the chateau next door and still standing. We spent a magical night, morning at breakfast on a huge old country table, and ended up staying the rest of that next day, Alexandre and I braving the cold water of the swimming pool. We tore ourselves away from Birgitte before the sun went down and drove back to Paris and Epinay. I will never forget this part of my trip, ever. Also Birgitte could use a housekeeper or someone to fill in when she's on vacation. Hmmmm. My internet cafe hour is up. Now I must return to Dublin.

My final entry from France

Time has just about run out. I'm back from my last day in Paris, which I spent mostly at the Musée D'Orsay and later, with Scott, at Montmartre, the highest spot in Paris and perhaps for me the sweetest spot yet. A Catholic mass was in progress in Montmartre's Sacre Coeur, another towering cathedral, and I remembered that a mass was also being said in Notre Dame on my very first day. It's now 8 pm. Scott's preparing a barbecue and we're going to celebrate Mathieu's twentieth birthday a few days early.

I've written only a small fraction of my experiences and impressions. About Paris, in general, it's been so much about the deep past for me. Maybe that's because I spent most of my time in the arrondisements along the Seine, in old Paris, classic Paris. With every footfall on cobblestone, I felt like I was stepping back into the Middle Ages - or stepping on it - a layer of medieval Paris lies buried just beneath the streets of Paris. I walked for miles and miles and pale ghosts of former residents seemed to be walking right alongside me, en masse. The longing to time-travel has been intense. All the ancient stonework; the walls, friezes and gargoyles; narrow streets meant for horses; all of this tugged at me.

I'm not sure I have any other complete sentences left in me tonight. I did just about everything on my wish list and added on a morbid fascination for royal decapitations and executions.

Major accomplishments during my stay: I managed not to fall on the steep, narrow, two-story staircase in Scott's house nor, after the first day, have I hit my head again on the low door leading to my snug aerie on the third floor. I forgot to mention that next door lives a goose whom I can hear through my window - a sound I have enjoyed

Bon nuit.

I take the train to Paris

It seems like a month, rather than a mere week, since I stood on Point Zero across from Notre Dame on my first evening in France. Since then, I've spent three nights in Genéve, Suisse, which I've written about. But before Genéve were two extraordinary days in the Loire Valley, about which I have not yet written. And then there's Paris. Since I just got home from several hours at the Louvre - the Louvre! - I'll resume the Paris part of my story and trust there will be time enough to get back to the Loire. Speaking of the Loire, I have now seen all three of the major rivers in France: the Seine, the Loire, and the Rhone (I saw the Rhone in Genéve), a fact that brings me joy.

On my first full day in France, a Tuesday, I returned to Paris on my own, although Christine was kind enough to walk the few blocks down the street to the Epinay train station with me. My instructions were to get off at the Paris-Austerlitz station, which I did. That's when I got lost, coming out of the station up onto the street and not having a clue in what direction to go. My simple goals were to return to Notre Dame and also to find a bank that would change my dollars into Euros, a completely foreign concept to me. Since I got off the plane at Charles De Gaulle Airport and placed my foot on French soil for the first time, so many firsts have followed: my first French sky, bird, cat, night, morning, boulangerie; my first sleep in France. Last Tuesday was my first experience speaking in French to a stranger on the street, a Parisienne who pointed me in the direction of my destination, La Place St Michel. In spite of following her finger, I ended up in the labrynth of the National Museum of Natural History with mastodons and such. Adjacent was the beautiful Jardin des Plantes where I tried my luck with a wizened French gentleman, for whom I felt an instant affection and who said to me gently, "Ah, St Michel, ce n'est pas prés." Ah, it's not close. So with a gap-toothed smile he told me I needed to get to the river and moved his arms straight and then to the right. Merci, monsieur. One more stop in a Pharmacie where the clerk was not so friendly, and I had my bearings. Once you see the Seine, you pretty much can figure out where you are in Paris. I was heading back to the Left Bank, where my friends had taken me the night before. I spent a long, deeply satisfying time at Notre Dame, as well as at the closeby bookshop Shakespeare and Company, named after the small publishing house of Sylvia Beach, who dared to publish James Joyce's Ulysses, when no one else would. The owner is renowned for rooms stuffed with books, especially the avant garde, and for taking in serious writers. There's still a bed and a writing table upstairs on the second floor reached by a narrow; one-person-at-a-time staircase. Mr Whitman's motto: Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise. The store's stamp reads: Shakespeare and Co Kilometer Zero Paris. I was enthralled.

I'd better shorthand the rest of this day or I'll never finish. And probably the truth is I never will. The longer I'm here, Paris only expands. You can absorb it in chocolate-size bites only. And today I had the strong feeling the city was absorbing me.

After Shakespeare and Co, I found Boulevard St Germain, the heart of what was at one time the literary and artistic center of Paris. Existentialists like Jean Paul Sartre and Camus hung out in this part of the Left Bank. Sartre and his companion Simone de Beauvoir had a regular table at a cafe that's still there and right next door to another cafe with the same history of artists and intellectuals. I read that Alberto Giocometti, a sculptor who inspires me, came here too, as well as the American expatriate "lost generation" of Hemingway. I ended up picnicking solo on a tiny, nondescript square on Boulevard St Germain, directly across from the two cafes. My camera battteries had died, so a friendly clerk sugggested the store Monoprix on the Rue des Rennes, which is perhaps a little like Trader Joe's except that it also sells clothes. I found batteries and bought white peaches and chocolate for my picnic. Only when I found a spot to sit down did I notice the cafes La Flore and Les Deux Magots across the street. Later in the afternoon, a sudden downpour sent everyone without an umbrella scurrying for cover; my Patagonia hoodie kept me dry as I walked the Rue de Rivoli to meet Scott and Christine at an appointed time at a cafe I'd heard serves the thickest and best hot chocolate in Paris. Alas, as it was the end of the day, the chocolate had run out. We stopped at another cafe, me for tea, my friends for hot chocolate anyway. In Paris, tips are already included in one's check (called an "addition"), so when I gave our attractive waiter a little extra he said discreetly, "Mademoiselle, je ne suis pas mariée." Mademoiselle, I am not married.

PS on Mont Blanc

On the day we visited Mont Blanc, that morning at around 3 am, eight climbers were killed in an avalanche on Mont Blanc: three Swiss and five Austrians. In the afternoon,we noticed helicopters flying near the summit and Scott remarked that helicopters are used only for search and rescue. So, we saw them searching.

Mont Blanc

A deep satisfaction derives from a dream come true. On my computer monitor at home in California is a list of mountains I would like to climb. Together with Mt Kilimanjaro, on that list is Mont Blanc - both so far away, unlikely propositions. Yesterday, I touched Mont Blanc; I breathed its pure air; I made eye contact. An aerial tram, one of the highest vertical tramways in the world, carried us 12,600-feet up the south side of the mountain, from the small village of Chamonix to a lesser peak called Aiguille du Midi. We disembarked only 3,000-feet or so beneath the domed summit of Mont Blanc (15,781-feet). Numerous outdoor terraces were ours for two hours, to picnic, to absorb the 360° view of the many surrounding peaks, to commune with Mont Blanc's summit, to soar on its beauty. Snow climbers - Italian, Swiss, French, British - equipped with exotic and colorful mountaineering gear, were heading off from our spot. Climbers already trekking up the side of Mont Blanc looked like ants, as did their tents nestled together below in an encampment in the snow. The weather cooperated to warm us with the sun and to give us an unobstructed view, so clear you could see human tracks on the summit.

Ecstasy. But as life sometimes insists, Ecstasy is often paired with Agony. And so we come to Part II of my Mont Blanc experience.

As we boarded the tram for the ride back down to Chamonix, Scott said, "Anyone interested in getting off at the halfway point and walking down the rest of the way?"

"How long is the hike," I asked. "And how steep?"
"Oh, an hour, and it's not steep, there's a path."

So with enthusiasm, we all gave the nod to the idea, and our party of four set off down the trail - Scott, Christine, Mathieu, and me. About a half hour later, I noticed that the village below seemed no closer. In fact, it looked astonishingly far away. The alpine roofs looked like they were on a distant planet.

"This hike is longer than hour," I said.
"It's two and a half hours," Scott said.
"You're joking."
"No, I saw the sign at the beginning of the trail."

Even though three years ago, I climbed California's Mt Whitney with ease, I hadn't stayed in shape. Oh, what kind of damage might I be in for, I wondered. I slowed down to conserve my feet and legs. An hour into it, the town looked no closer, I stopped to tighten my hiking boots (fortunately, I brought them to France), and I was trailing significantly, with Mathieu in the lead and almost skipping down the hill. My legs, my quadriceps in particular, started turning to jelly and were virtually gone for the final half hour, which turned out to be the steepest part of the descent. Scott offered me his shoulder to lean on and, with his help, I hobbled down to the trail's end and back to horizontal ground.

It turns out we had descended 4,300-feet or so.

I looked back up at the summit, still shining glacier-white, and the agony and the ecstasy became one.

I took a hot bath when we got home and today, though sore, all is well.I will be able to walk the streets of Paris again.

It's midnight and I am writing this from 65 Rue de Petit Vaux, Epinay sur Orge. We drove back from Geneva today, taking a detour through the Burgundy wine region, picnicking in the town of Beaune, much of whose architecture dates back to the 15th century, or even earlier. Centuries-old stone walls that should have crumbled long ago still stand. As Scott said, winemaking goes back as far as the Romans.

Tired, we ate dinner at ten o'clock. So much life is going on, eating at nine or ten is regular in Scott's home, and I've fully adjusted. In fact, I'm the last one up tonight, my job to turn out the lights;

PS from Genéve

Regarding le petit dejeuner, I forgot to mention the orange juice, tea for me, and espresso in beautiful small cups. Regarding all meals, there is no word for this in French, but I have nominated myself the official dishwasher.

We are leaving for an excursion to Mont Blanc in an hour, àpres the petit dejeuner. Mont Blanc, in the Alps, is the highest peak in Western Europe. Am I excited? Oh, indeed.

From Genéve

Yesterday, Scott, Alexandre, Mathieu, and I drove from Epinay to Genéve, a drive of about five hours, mostly on the A6, which is a freeway much like ours in America, but bordered by rolling green farmland, thick forests, and many road-sign images of impressive churches considered to be of some historical or architectural significance. Since arriving in France, I have observed an abundance of Catholic churches, many of them nearly as old as twelfth-century Notre Dame. This morning, walking in the old sector of Genéve, we saw the Catholic Cathedral that was overtaken by the fathers of the Protestant Reformation sometime in the 1600s. The Cathedral's Catholic origins are unmistakable, however, all vaulted ceilings, towering arches, and stained-glass.

Mathieu is Scott's oldest son and my 6'1" godson, who turns twenty in ten days. Alexandre is fourteen,the same age as my godson Joe. In the backseat on the way to Genéve, Mathieu was reading George Orwell and Alexandre William Golding's "The Lord of the Flies," in French, of course. We are staying in the apartment of Scott's long-time girlfriend, Christine, who is remarkable with food: le petit dejeuner, dejeuner, et aussi le diner. Toutes! We've also picnicked a lot, which I love. For those of my readers who want to know more about breakfasts in particular (you know who you are), les petits dejeuners in France are about one thing only: plaisir. This morning, for example, Alexandre had first some pure butter on his fresh bread, and next some softened chocolate. (Chocolate is bounteous here in a way that I have never seen.) A French breakfast table is, above all, colorful, and liable to be filled with fresh long baguettes, toast, croissants, pain du chocolat, brioche, many jars of all sorts of jams, perhaps some red apples, and finally, importantly, butter. The French breakfast celebrates abundance and companionship, forgives and discourages any guilt surrounding food. This has been my experience every morning since I arrived.

My last blog ended with the propitious sign of the full moon rising over Paris. As we drove through the mountains surrounding Genéve in the rain yesterday -- low mountains that Scott called "the pre-Alps" -- a massive rainbow displayed itself across the road. Is my trip blessed, I wondered? Was it also a sign of good fortune that I started my own relationship with Paris at Point Zero?

Before leaving for France, I had read in a guidebook about Point Zero, a spot ill-described but supposedly situated somewhere at Notre Dame andserving as the mark for the exact center of Paris. In centuries past, all measurements to and from Paris used Point Zero as their fulcrum. So, perhaps having a nature that prefers beginning at the beginning, I made note of this Point Zero. What better place to begin? Shortly after arriving, after enjoying my first dejeuner of fresh tomatoes and mozzarella under the arbor in Scott's backyard, he asked me if I'd thought about what I'd like to see in Paris. "Well, there's Point Zero," I said. "Point Zero? What's Point Zero?" he said. Although living in and near Paris for twenty years, Scott had no idea what I was talking about, neither did anyone else sitting at the table. I felt a bit ridiculous. Several hours later, however, in the square at the front of Notre Dame, we suddenly looked down and spotted an age-polished, large, round plaque with the barely legible letters spelling Point Zero. I had arrived.

Bonjour, ma famille et mes amies

I'm writing from my friend Scott's house - a very old, stone French countryhouse, small but with three stories. My room is on the top floor; its door is so low I spent the first few days bumping my head. I would have written before now, but I was having trouble with the blog and also having to get used to a different keyboard. On the French keyboard, for example, both the comma and period are not where an American typist would expect; neither is "a" or "m" nor many more letters. So my typing is quite slow. I'm hoping to finish something before we leave for Geneva, which will be soon. I'm staying in the village of Epinay Sur Orge (the Orge is a river that flows into the Seine). The village may be small, but has two boulangeries and its own Post Office. I've already been to the boulangerie this morning for two long baguettes and a half-dozen croissants. Everyone you see in the morning is carrying a baguette, and in the afternoon baguettes are ever-present too. Alexandre, Scott's 14-year-old son, showed me the correct way, the "French way," to carry a baguette: horizontally and at your side.

Epinay is a twenty-minute ride by car to Paris; Epinay also has its own train station with trains going straight into Paris. I arrived at Charles De Gaulle Airport at around 1:00 pm (13:00 French time) and by 5:00 I was standing in front of Notre Dame. No building I have ever seen comes close to the massive size, majesty, or creative imagination of Notre Dame. The hundreds of gargoyles and the brooding bell tower, where Victor Hugo's hunchback lived, particularly held me rapt, thrilled even. Scott, his girlfriend Christine, and I were fortunate: there were no lines to enter the Cathedral, and so we easily got inside, where a Mass was in progress, spoken in French, of course, and with music. I vowed to go back by myself the next day, which I did, to stare again at this phenomenon. After Notre Dame, we walked the narrow cobblestone streets of the Left Bank for an hour or so (perhaps more to come later on the Left Bank) and then had a picnic of cheese and bread sitting on the bank of the Seine. I have to say that to be sitting there on the Seine, within sight of the Tour Eiffel, watching my first sunset in France, felt unreal and very real at the same time.

Before heading home, Scott took me on a night-time tour of Paris. We drove down the Champs-Elysée, around the Arc de Triomph, and got out at the Tour Eiffel all lit up in blue to commemorate France being President of the European Union at the moment. Normally, the Eiffel Tour is lit with golden lights at night like the rest of Paris. A still-yellow full moon was rising, big and glorious. I do not exaggerate.