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.