Living the Journey: November 2024

This is the 6th installment on our 8-month trip, following:

Main square in Bath, England

After nearly two months in the UK, we were headed to a place I'd been waiting to experience for over 60 years: Paris. We decided to take a direct flight out of Bristol, England and build in a couple of days for the nearby historic city of Bath. Between Bath and Bristol is the village of Keynsham, where we stayed two nights in a 17th century inn that had good prices and easy access to public transport. We still had a couple of rides on our Brit Rail passes to use up.

At the ancient Roman baths

Bath is an elegant city with a fascinating history. It was amazing to walk through the Roman baths in the footsteps of people 2000 years ago. The curation of the site, including video recreations of ancient bathers, invites the feeling of time travel.

Lacock

We got a free tour of the city when two look-alike women pulled up in their tiny car, and we folded inside with their dog, Tiggy. The previous month in Sidmouth, we'd met these twin sisters, Cat(therine) and Hat(tie), and now we were reuninting in their home town of Bath.

Lacock Abbey

Cat and Hat took us to Lacock, a National Trust storybook village where scenes from Downton Abbey, Pride & Prejudice, and Harry Potter were filmed. Lacock Abbey, a gothic revival building founded in the 13th century, remained a nunnery until the suppression of the Roman Catholic institutions in England in the 16th century. After that, it became a private home. We explored the lush grounds with Tiggy romping happily in the grass. We laughed together so much, I'm pretty sure we knew each other in a past life.

Eating dinner with Maura & Anna overlooking the river.

One evening we took the train to Bristol for a sweet few hours with Anna and Maura, whom we'd met in China. This trip was becoming a reunion with people who'd taught at my university in Nanning, since we'd seen Kevin in Colorado and Paul in Liverpool. Bristol has recently been named a choice spot for expats by EatWalkLearn and Brent & Michael are Going Places. Based on the few hours we were there, I get it. The city is walk- and bike-friendly, has several universities, and is built around the river Avon.

We had considered taking the Eurostar to Paris, but the flight from Bristol was only an hour and a bit less expensive. However, after getting to the airport two-and-a-half hours before the flight, and dreamily imagining the convenience, smooth ride, and leg room of a high-speed train, we wished we'd opted for the rails.

Oui!

But all regret evaporated when we stepped onto the streets of Paris and checked into the Hotel Henriette. I don't recall who recommended this affordable, darling place in a convenient location at the border of the 13th and 5th arrondissments, but merci whoever you are!

I was stunned to finally have made it to Paris. Can you believe I co-wrote a historical novel set during the French Revolution without having been there? My co-author was an expert in the era--and I'd done some of my own research. Because of this, I had weird deja vu moments throughout the week.

Sadly, Dave had developed a cold and a nagging leg injury, so I ended up spending a lot of time solo walking the streets. Fortunately he had been to Paris before. And while I would have loved to have experienced it all with him, I enjoyed wandering alone about 10 miles each day. I never took the metro, only a few buses because I wanted to see everything.

The first day set the tone for the week, when I discovered a tranquil rose garden behind our hotel. It was set in the Square Rene-Le Gall, a huge but magically hidden public park with shady tree-lined paths, hedges shaped like green snowmen, and a children's play area. I felt like Mary discovering the Secret Garden.

That day I wandered around a Sorbonne campus, through the Jarden des Plantes, and along the Seine where I viewed the magnificence of Notre Dame. It's under construction so I couldn't go in and in my mind saved it for another time. As I snacked on the best-ever ham-and-cheese croissant on the sidewalk at Cafe A Lacriose, it became clear this whole city is a feast.

I was stunned by the scope of it all. Everywhere I looked I saw something I could have gazed upon for hours. Every place I went, I wanted to spend a whole day there. I was already scheming on a way to return and stay for a few months.

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francuil, aka Geroge Sand

In Luxemburg Gardens, I whispered to George Sand that I'd been on the edge of happy tears all day. Then I bought a sugar and lemon crepe on the street and made my way back to the hotel.

That night, Dave and I went to St. Julien le Pauvre, a gothic church on the Left Bank, for a classical piano and cello concert. Built in the 13th century, it's one of the city's oldest religious buildings. Hearing Handel, Schubert, Mozart, and Pachelbel in this 13th century building would send shivers through a statue.

piano & cello at St. Julien's

The next night we attended another concert at the larger Egalis-St.-Germaine-de-Pres. My spirit rearranged itself as I heard Ave Maria and Vivaldi's The Four Seasons performed by a quintet. In our travels, we always seek out soul-enlivening music and dance and all the arts. (At four months into our trip, we've gone to jam band shows in Colorado, a musical in London, a rock concert in Liverpool, a choir in Wales, a Fado show in Portugal, and flamenco in Spain.)

Earlier that day, I found 27 Rue de Fleurs, where Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas lived from 1903-1938. It was quite a moment standing there, imagining the domestic and creative life of these two extraordinary women. Here they held Saturday literary salons attended by the likes of Picasso, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Guillaume Apollinaire, Marie Laurencin, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson, Georges Braque, and Henri Matisse.

Everything looks like an oil painting.

That day I walked through Montparnasse and outdoor markets, to Bon Marche. I visited the Hotel National des Invalides and gardens and crossed the Seine to Tuileries Gardens, where I savored a croque monsieur at an outdoor table and checked out a vintage merry-go-round that struck me, somehow, as quintessentially French. Maybe it was in Amelie? If not, it could have been.

Dave rallied on Day 3 to go to Sainte-Chappelle, which he was looking forward to seeing again but was disappointed at how crowded it was on this free-entry day. But the push of people didn't diminish this jewel of a royal chapel.

I wanted French onion soup all day, every day!

We also went to Musee d'Orsay, housed in an 1898 glass-roofed railway station with a monumental golden clock. It has the largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces in the world. In other words, just another day in Paris! It was crowded, too, but even so I had sublime moments alone in front of Renoirs and Van Goghs--and other paintings I remember searing into my brain as a kid when I leafed through an art book my parents had on the coffee table for years.

Luxemburg Gardens

I loved Luxemburg Gardens so much that we went back together, strolling amidst the sculptures and lush flora, while people read *real* books on green chairs scattered about.

One little corner of Sainte-Suplice

Later we made our way to Sainte-Suplice, the third largest church in the city, built in the 17th century. A service was just ending as we walked in. The orchestral Grand Organ, which is considered a national monument, boomed as people rose from the pews to watch a procession of priests in imperial garb. The church is a jaw-dropper, with Delacroix murals and soaring architecture.

My favorite piece in the Petit Palais

We also made it to the Petit Palais to view its eclectic collection of art from across centuries. And later I roamed the architecturally complex funhouse called the Center Pompidou to see the Surrealism exhibit. Being so immersed in art made me think about how humans have forever strived to express the spirit and mysteries of life, in all its horror and beauty.

One of highlights of this trip was finally getting to see Shakespeare and Company, the famous English language bookstore that first opened in another location in the 1930s. It was closed during the war by the Nazis and later reopened in its current location in 1951. It became a meeting place for expat literary life in Paris visited by writers such as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Anais Nin, Richard Wright, Henry Miller, and James Baldwin.

tah dah!

Ever since reading Time Was Soft There, a memoir about a writer who lived for a time in the bookstore, I wanted to visit. The place is perfect, with its stuffed shelves, reading nooks, and a piano that someone was gently playing. I wandered around for an hour and bought Barbara Kingsolver's Pulitzer Prize-winning Demon Copperhead.

That night, I met up for dinner with a long-time Facebook connection, the poet Kaaren Kitchell, who has lived in Paris many years. While rain romantically stippled the windows and I devoured lush mushroom risotto, we talked for hours like old friends about literature and politics and people we know in common. I'd love to see her again.

My one low-light was my tour of Versailles. Ironic, given how excited I was to see it since I'd cowritten that aforementioned novel about the French Revolution. First, no maps of the palace or gardens were provided. Instead, you had to use a QR code, useless for me since my phone didn't work there. Besides, I hate looking at screens in lieu of maps and menus. I know, I sound old.

But beyond that, the rooms were jammed with so many people that progress was slow. From afar, everything looked sumptuous, but up close, a lot of the art and furniture and flora in the gardens was unkempt. Not one of the many fountains was running. A contrarian part of my brain laughed at how appalled the royals would have been at the plebes desecrating their possessions. I can't even find a picture I took of that day, so let me offer instead this one of the Pont Alexandre III bridge--an example of the artistry available to all everywhere you look in this city.