Two Loves

It's been too many lovely days in Paris since I blogged.  My only excuse is that I am enjoying every beautiful moment with the two loves of my life.

Our "love lock" from April 2012

In the last few days we have explored most of our favourite arrondissements.  I am not sure how many people would enjoy our Paris which mostly includes hours of endless walking and seemingly doing nothing.  We walk slowly stopping to admire a well-tended flower box or a pair of shoes in a window; we veer off onto unexplored side streets and bend over to coo at a coiffed Parisian pooches; we collapse and stretch ourselves into bamboo brasserie chairs to order another bière blanche and we talk about our future in Paris.  I have stopped wearing a watch. 

I couldn't wait to take Chris marketing and over the weekend we visited three, including le Marché du livre ancien et d'occasion George Brassens.  I want to live in this open air library with its soundtrack of chirping birds and smells of musty books.  I love the hushed, almost reverent atmosphere and the seriousness of the book sellers.  Chris bought me a gorgeous, yellow-paged Plan de Paris that still has the original, now brittle, full colour map of Paris attached to the back cover.  I have been turning the pages carefully trying to find its publication date.  

Chris has fallen back into Paris like he never left and has become even bolder since last September challenging the Champs on a Sunday afternoon and eating pâté and steak tartare with gusto.  Nothing seems to phase him here anymore even riding a packed métro car when it's 30 degrees outside.  He is so relaxed and completely in his element that I can barely remember his first few anxious days here in 2007.  The two of us glide through the city, still awestruck and moved by its beauty and glamour, and I often feel like Paris was created just for us.

Police horses at Place de la Concorde

About that pâté...
I would love to live on a diet of baguette, blue cheese and milk chocolate and at 36 I still shudder when a sliver of broccoli touches my tongue.  In Paris, I try to eat whatever comes on my plate but the pâté was a mistake.  I couldn't decipher the smudged chalk written menu and only saw the word "salade".  When the salades arrived dotted with pâté, I bravely stabbed a chunk, forked it into my mouth, gagged and swallowed it whole.  Chris laughed.  However, I got the last laugh after lunch as we walked along rue Saint-Honoré and I stopped to throw a fistful of Kleenex wrapped pâté into a garbage can.   Not chic but sneaky!

Only in Paris...
Could you see a man walking down a street in Les Halles on a Sunday afternoon wearing cut off jean shorts, a white tank top, black suspenders, black ankle boots and a pair of shiny, silver handcuffs dangling loosely around his neck like a Hermès scarf.  

Tourists behaving badly...
Maybe I am getting old and cranky but Paris seems overrun with a lot of female 20-somethings living their Girls fantasy, heavy with entitlement and ennui, and complaining loudly about everything.  And they can't manage a word of French, even a simple "merci".      

"I am already so bored just thinking about all the dumb questions I am going to have to answer about Paris when I get home." 

"The only thing I am really going to miss about Paris is being able to buy apricot juice in the grocery store."

"It's ok here.  Salads are kind of expensive but wine is cheap.  The women are ok.  Definitely more put together than women in Miami - nobody is wearing track pants."