Autumn 2017: Paris pour la première fois (quatre)

This is the story of a perfect day, and it starts with a burst of sunlight.

The city has decided to dazzle in the daytime and I am in a jaunty mood as I set off for a noontime rendezvous at the Musee d’Orsay with a very good friend – let’s call him C – whom I haven’t seen in two years.

I’m just at the Gare St. Lazare getting tickets for tomorrow, I text him.

Catching the subway, C replies.

You might get there before I do.

I have 20 stops and 1 connection, don’t be so sure.:)

Joyeux anniversaire, says the kind SNCF guy as he hands me back my passport and a ticket to Lyon. I give him a brilliant smile, and go looking for the right train to Solferino.

C does arrive before I do, and obligingly sends a photo of the statue he’s closest to, which I guess is how you arrange museum meetups.

I find him near the massive rhino – and a massive queue. Looks like we need to give up our Musee d’Orsay visit, but no matter; it is a glorious day outdoors so we stroll to the Seine and catch up on each other’s lives.

He is looking well, this Frenchman I used to crush on for quite a bit back when we were both working in the same country.

That crush dissolved harmlessly and we remained friends in the same circle. We watched tennis and boxing tournaments ; went dune bashing, smoked shisha under the desert moon and camped on the shores of the Gulf; and spent many a rowdy Thursday night out at our favorite club at the W.

The eve before I left that country, he was the last one to show up at my flat with offers to help pack – I had him weigh the luggage – and I remember before we parted he hugged me warmly and that was nice.

All of which simply means I was enormously delighted to be sitting with him now by the sunlit banks of the Seine, and wasn’t I lucky to have an old friend in Paris today?

We walk some more downriver; everyone is out to enjoy the cornflower skies and radiant sunshine, and the banks are dotted with people and the occasional waterfowl. I stop to say hello to a large swan.

From the brightly shining Seine we wander into the cool, green spaces and lush bowers of the Tuileries. Birds flutter past vivid blooms, and well-trimmed lawns roll gently into the distance; one could almost pretend it was springtime, and not just an exceptionally attractive autumn day.

I would have been happy to walk aimlessly in these gardens until sunset, but then we emerge onto the grounds of the imposing Louvre, where the black-clad patrols strike a discordant note similar to that of the Gare du Nord.

Clearly we have no luck with museums, because it is closed – for the Louis Vuitton show, I find out later, but we are too early to notice any fashion people (I see them preening on Instagram later that day) and street photographers were nowhere in sight yet. Just your average throng of tourists and the grim-faced police who are ostensibly there to keep everyone safe, but also remind me that I can die any moment- and I am not overreacting, that attack in Marseille was only two days ago.

Oh well, one must take the beauty with the specter of sudden, violent death, especially here.

We stop for lunch and bring our food to the sunny park around the Tour St. Jacques. (This visit has been long on takeout and short on fine dining so far, but French to-go is nothing to sniff at, and I truly have a thing for eating on park benches, I don’t know why.)

The rest of the day reads like every tourist’s to-do list: with our boissons, we stroll along the grand Rue de Rivoli and the lively Marais, the even grander Champs-Élysées. Just before the Arc de Triomphe is the embassy of the country where we worked together, and we look up at its flag and have a shared moment of reminiscing.

Is there a more agreeable way to see the sights than this: on foot, coffee in hand, sharing thoughtful conversations with a Frenchman sous le ciel?

Yesterday I thought Paris was charming, whimsical even; today it is magnificent. Everywhere you look is unimaginable, unspeakable grace and beauty that breaks your heart and fills your soul at the same time, over and over again.

And curiously, the song in my head is from the live-action Beauty and the Beast, sung by Belle in Montmartre: This is the Paris of my childhood..

All too soon the day winds down; we duck into a cafe then head into the Salomon de Rothschild public park, because there is always a lovely hideaway whenever you look for it in this city, and a quiet corner where you can watch the golden afternoon deepen into a velvety dusk.

C and I leave the park, walk to the metro, get on the same train. Right before my stop, he gives me the same warm parting hug he gave me two years ago and promises to see me on my next trip to France.

(And I think, as I disembark, that I may be smiling just a little.)

💙🍁🇫🇷

This was my perfect Parisian day, and the memory of it will always be aglow with that peculiar warm autumn joy.