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| Paris 2011 |
Fresh out of the gate and on the way to baggage claim, we followed an older lady down a walkway between the ascending and descending escalators. The first commercial signage we ran into was just overhead for her and about chest high for me. Thus began a weird version of the limbo with a full escalator of people laughing alongside us until we ran into a concrete abutment and had to toss carry-on bags to strangers and hump over the moving rubber rail of the walkway. The man who helped me turned to his wife laughing and said, not unkindly, a slang word that I wish I could remember. It wasn't boubule ("fatso") but maybe a variation meaning approximately "like Greg Luzinski" or "large but agile." He explained it to me and said it was complimentary. It would require an overly complex cynicism to think it was not.
Tracy found us a truly charming studio in The Marais, a short walk from Place Des Vosges. We walked a wide loop through jet lag, on a pleasant late summer day with a touch of autumn--a day I'd rather experience here than at home, where nine months of cool, wet weather are about to set in until mid-June of next year. September in Paris--mercurial sun and shade. After a short nap, we checked out the Italian restaurant literally next door, a place called Rusti. One young man was running the front, expediting, and serving, and doing a cheerful, heroic job of it. The food was good. The movie poster on the back of my menu was right on: La Dolce Vita.
I also want Mr. and Mrs. Random to know: we brought space money to share, so make a wish.
