Montparnasse

Every time I return to Paris, I feel the same uncanny exhilaration and familiarity, as if I’d lived there forever, but as a stranger. As a stranger, because otherwise even the nuances would become too familiar to be awed by them. Each morning and afternoon I’d stop at the same boulangerie, call out a cheery, “Bonjour, Madame!” and ask for a baguette. I’d tuck it under my arm and rush home to enjoy it with cheese and fruit and hot tea. It would become as ordinary as, as – eggs and bacon. It would cease to be exciting and different. (It would still and always remain comfort food.)

Let me be a traveler and a stranger, testing the oddest foods on display, taking chances on the narrow streets winding out of sight, stopping in at tiny stores to ask where I am.

Our return to Paris from Nancy came by a different route than we’d ever taken before. We had to pay strict attention to the change points on the metro map, denoted by green, blue, or red. All was going well until we got off at Blvd. Montparnasse and couldn’t find the hotel. I called and got the address. You’d think that would have been the first step, but I had thought the directions off the web site would be good enough. We walked and walked, but neither the address nor the hotel appeared. I was annoyed because obviously I had not understood telephone French, so I begged Mary to call this time.

She did a great job. Starting with, “I don’t speak English!” she plowed on, and finally discovered that we’d come about 7 long blocks too far. The metro stop was correct, but we’d walked in the wrong direction.

“Not my fault!” I would have pleaded earlier, but we were both too foot-weary by that time to care whose fault it was.

The hotel was elegant, used for expensive tour groups and well-heeled travelers. We approached the desk, scruffy and train-worn, with backpacks making our weary shoulders bend frontwards.

I’m pretty sure this was the hotel I grabbed off the Internet at the last minute because the one I previously booked turned out to be in the red light district. The price on this one was high but within range, and the area was definitely safe. After booking the room, I got a return email saying something like, “Congratulations, you have reserved our cheapest room!”

An elevator whisked us up to the third floor (or 2^nd floor, depending on whose system you use). Our key unlocked the door that opened to paradise!

Beautifully decorated, the enormous room had a tiny kitchen area, a big TV (showing BBC serials in French, of course), a terrific bathroom with heated towel rack, and tall windows opening onto the street. We were amazed! Cheap never looked like this!

It didn’t last long. Within a few hours, a leak in the bathroom over the toilet had dampened even my spirits and made a small pool of water on the floor.

I did not want to change rooms! Mary insisted on complaining to the management, but I kept thinking and saying, “We can step around it. We can wear our shoes. We can cover our heads with a towel. We can . . .”

Mary complained. They looked at it. We were quickly moved to another room, same floor, different view.

The new room was even larger than the first, but had a courtyard view, meaning we looked down into the neighboring restaurant’s outdoor seating area. Tall buildings surrounded it, giving a stark background to the tall lacy trees growing in the patio. Though it wasn’t the street view, it turned out to be good nighttime entertainment.

In the evenings, we ate at the middle eastern snack bar that formed the street entrance to the restaurant. There, we watched stylishly dressed patrons descending the stairs to the romantic outdoor patio.

Afterwards, we went back to our room, opened the window and drapes and spied on the diners below, letting the hum of their musical voices accompany our games of double solitaire far into the night. I think the last diners left around 1:00 a.m., long after I was asleep.

I think I’ll wait to share more about our return to Paris because there’s so much to tell. After substitute teaching all day, my brain needs to rest awhile. Too bad there’s no outdoor restaurant here in the desert on a cool, full moon night.