Day 5: Paris

I’ve decided to skip ahead a bit to what is going on now. I will always be able to remember what I did in NYC the day we visited The Modern, went shopping, and saw American Idiot, as well as my last day of strolling Central Park and more shopping, but the thoughts and feelings I’m having right now are simply unparalleled; and I’m not sure if I’ll get a chance to accurately document them again.

I can’t even (pause to stare at adorable French toddler in ladybug hat) try to count the hours it’s been since I left the Lispenard apartment, it is most likely around sixteen, but, it feels like sixty. Sixty extremely overwhelming hours (see Release entry). But I have finally made it to a place where I can breathe. I can breathe fantastic Parisian air and it feels good.

The particular brand of air I am surrounded by now is in a lovely park near the river. After I landing at Charles de Gaulle, standing in the wrong customs line, and getting the turtle shell on my back, I jumped at the first guy who said “taxi” to me in the airport. I found it very foreign and exciting that the cabbies come inside to pick you up—not at all out of the ordinary or suspicious to me, seeing as I had just come from AirFrance where they give you free champagne, food, socks, toiletry bags, and Clarins’ Anti Aging Cream—why wouldn’t the cabbies come inside to get their passengers? It wasn’t until I sat in the Mercedes “cab” for about twenty minutes and saw all the other vehicles with taxi lights on top that I realized I was not in an actual cab, but instead a town car with a driver!

Needless to say, my fair was double what my hostess told me it should be, but the feeling of throwing fifty extra Euros down the drain doesn’t really compare to that of finding a familiar face on the streets of Paris and being able to send your parents an “I’M ALIVE!” email. So, I made my first couple of mistakes; now we know what not to do next time.

Said hostess is a dear friend of Kefryn and Dave’s from Miami who is now living in Paris. I met her outside of her office, (pause to brush away Parisian ant crawling across keyboard) and thankfully, just as I was realizing my phone was out of commission, she was walking outside to throw something away… cue familiar face sighting. So I ditched the bulky part of the luggage and she brought me to the ideal place for a first lunch in Perée; an outdoor café, of course. A most delicious salad with all my favorite foods in the world and pleasant conversation later, we made a trip back to the office and another to the copy shop, she sent me on my way to find the only thing I wanted in the world: a place to nap. Which brings us back to that park air I was breathing earlier…

So yes, amongst the homeless and non-homeless alike, I napped in this park and awoke about an hour later to a cloudless sky, a young man strumming a guitar in the distance, and a few French ants in my pants—literally and figuratively.

I think I’ll go attend to the latter now, there is a river calling my name.