I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane

While those of the Christian faith celebrate the birth of my homie Jesus, I am figuring out what to put in my carry-on for Air France Flight Number 83, San Francisco International to Charles De Gaulle, leaving later today. As those readers who have the pleasure of spending any amount of time with me know, the family has decided to forgo the usual Christmas voyage nearer to the equator (most recently Hawaii and Costa Rica) to brave a slightly northern lattitude and the decidedly non-coastal pleasures of Paris.

The last time I went to Paris, I arrived dazed and confused in the morning, looking something like this:

That is, in fact, exactly what I looked like. I took that photo on the RER from CDG to Gare du Nord  on my way to meet my friend Rebecca at our hotel near the Bastille. As you can see, I was quite tired and wearing a blue hoodie, which was once a staple of the Seth wardrobe, but now unrecognizable to most. I also had a lot more hair going on back then as was the fashion at the time. But that was in July, when Paris is muggy and prone to thunderstorms. We were there during a then-record heat wave, and it felt more like a California summer than anything else.




Also, in July, we learned, Paris is mobbed with visitors from the south. We frequently ran into large groups of octogenarian Spaniards near Notre Dame, which we lovingly referred to as the Spanish Inquisition (being Jewish, we are all too familiar with the implications of the term).

Rebecca had already been in France for the previous her week (her parents, cardiologists, had been attending a conference in Marseilles), and while she was more adjusted to the time change, I was being assaulted by it. We missed dinner for the majority of our trip because I had fallen asleep while we watched Le Coup de Monde in our hotel while the sun was still up (Fun Fact: we never stayed out past when the sun went down while in Paris. This was a combination of our relentless days of sightseeing and the fact that sun didn't go down until almost 11:00PM).

When we were there, Sofia Coppola's film Marie Antoinette was playing at a theater off of the Bastille. We went to see it before going to Versailles in English with French subtitles. It paved the way for Rebecca's imminent, rapturous visit to Versailles, where she fell in love with the under-renovation Hall of Mirrors. Rebecca's love of Versailles was one of those distance makes the heart grow fonder things. After we had returned to the states was when she first realized how much she loved it.

Rebecca loved Volver a little less, which we also saw in Paris after our fatiguing day-trip to EuroDisney, where we payed a lot of money for not so delicious food and waited in very long lines for rides that constantly underwhelmed. There was, however, a small satisfaction in seeing It's a Small World's Moulin Rouge display in the home of Moulin Rouge, so it kind of compensated us for the 58 Euro that we had given up to the Mickey Mouse Corporation for entrance.

Traveling with one another person can be taxing, especially when you share a room and an itinerary. But for all its challenges, it has its own set of rewards. Proximity to Rebecca, who loves to buy food, but has a small appetite, meant that I was able to frequently savor her discards, which included the most delicious palmier in Montmartre and practically everything else. It also meant that we could share the displeasure of having the runs after eating delicious cherries on the Champ de Mars before scaling the Eiffel Tower.

We had to plan our day carefully, around the needs of our bowels, thanks to these delicious, but unwashed cherries, for which we paid 6 euro at a very fancy grocer on the path from Les Invalides to the Champ de Mars. 

This whole remembrance of things past is just my way of saying that this is the Paris that I've experienced: warm, summery, busy, and shared with a best friend. What I am about to embark on is a very different Paris: cold, cloudy, rainy, and shared with the Shamban clan in an apartment on the left bank. 

When I land tomorrow morning in Paris, I will have been on a plane for 12 hours without any stops. I will have taken the RER to the 6 to Dupliex, walked up Grenelle until I hit my street. My parents will probably be napping in the apartment, and my brother and his fiance will be somewhere over the Atlantic on their way to Munich, where they will be changing to a Paris bound flight. 

I will be updating the blog, probably sans pictures, while in Paris, so be sure to stay tuned. It promises to be an exciting time, and I look forward to sharing it with you.