last day in Paris

It's always amazing and surprising how a week away seems like a mountain-load of time. Did I really just leave the farmette last Monday? It feels like I've been gone for weeks. In this lies one of the beautiful aspects of travel: just a few days give you the break that you need, so that you can return freshly focused on the life that is your everyday,

I return to Madison tomorrow, but today, the day is completely Parisian and my own. I've done all that I wanted to do. I have no imperatives or even ideas as to what must happen on this last day. There's a semblance of a plan -- I meet my friends for breakfast and then I meet them for lunch. Otherwise -- I can roam, in the way that I like to roam when I want to clear my head and get myself ready for the challenges that always lie ahead.

So, breakfast, with these two.

And then... well, I head out! Where? Well you might ask! Never in my travels have I been so completely without a goal, without a destination. I walk out the door and I try to sense which direction would feel good, where I should turn, where I might pause. I take very few photos. I just keep walking. 

(No matter how well I dress, what jewelry or make up I slap on when I am here, I can never ever hope to measure up to the Parisian older woman. An example: )

And I see that I am heading west, and somehow I managed to find myself on the street with the Rodin Museum and I glance in through the fence...

(school children, leaving behind the Thinker...)

... and this gives me a sudden urge to enter. So I buy a ticket, which I suppose is a bit of a waste because I have no intention of visiting the museum, I just want the Rodin gardens. 

(The Museum, as seen from the garden)

That felt good! 

Next? Well, there is the Invalides Square -- I cross it often and I seem to be crossing it right now, so I must be heading in the direction of the Eiffel Tower, no?

And here's were you run smack into the Rue Cler Market. Lovely autumnal produce. Plums, grapes, mushrooms. Flowers.

I wasn't going to pause, but then I noticed the honey store and of course I dont really need honey because we have quite excellent local honey back home, but maybe I should walk in anyway to see what's there...

I leave with honey. Predictably.

I suppose in the end, this structure was in fact a destination point. Not because I must see the Eiffel Tower on my Paris trip, but because it's on the other side of town from where I'm staying, so if you want to crisscross Paris, chances are you'll wind up at some point at the Eiffel Tower. Especially if you're as much stuck on Left Bank rambles as I am.

On my walk back, I run into my friends. At a shop with children's stuff. That's not terribly surprising -- we were aiming toward the same lunch place where we had a meetup scheduled. Still, it's kind of funny to look up and see someone you know paying for a book in the line just in front of you.

Okay, lunch. Of course, I take them to Cafe Varenne. Is there anyone I haven't taken to Cafe Varenne for lunch? (Well, if I think you wont like it, then I wont suggest it, because it would make me sad to see you trash the place that is such a favorite of mine! But Pawel and Karolina are not trashers of anything -- they're upbeat and great fun to have here and so we sit down and order -- and one dish that Varenne does well is the one with snails. This proves to be very amusing because we cannot get the snails out of their shells and we are almost at the point of cracking the shells to pieces, when finally, through ingenuity and perseverance those two succeed. Me, I just eat the spoils of their effort!

We part again after lunch. I have a few stops to make and so do they. Food, a book, a cup to replace the one I bought here and then broke at home last week. I feel like on this trip I didn't really shop for anyone (except for the grandkids) and especially not for myself, yet somehow I am now carrying several bags and they are heavy. How can this be?

The truth is, I've been walking a lot today. Four hours? Five? I am tired!.

This is what you want to be at the end of your trip to France -- you want to be tired (it means you really fit in a lot), and happy to go home.

In the evening, I again pick a new restaurant for myself: Maison Cluny. (Pawel and Karolina have family in Paris and this evening is reserved for them,) Aside from being well liked, it has this virtue: it is close. A seven minute walk. Today, I need close.

This place, too, gets a glowing review from my hotel and I have to say, the newsletter that the hotel sends to its visitors (which anyone can also find online) has been spot-on with all its suggestions (they can be brutally honest!). The outside terrace of M. Cluny is on a spacious and quiet side street, so that you aren't breathing in car noise and car exhausts all evening long. 

I order two things -- a pumpkin soup which I swear every small Paris restaurant offers at this time of the year, and a pasta with a pimento sauce and bits of shrimp and other shellfish. 

Both are right up there!

I walk back to my hotel very slowly and not only because I have to attack the job of packing up for tomorrow's very long trip. I'm tired, I'm reflective, and I still want to soak in that last evening in Paris.  And I search for ways to take a bit of it back with me: a smell, a mood, a wistful attachment to all that I've seen learned in the hundreds, no, thousands of strolls up and down these streets. 

Still, I am tired. And I am also very happy to be returning to the people and things I love back home.