Some Jewish Thoughts for the Secular New Year

I hate the word resolution. Resolutions, by their nature, involve us in remediating a personal shortcoming. When we inevitably break those promises to ourselves, it is very difficult to go back. It is why so many resolutions are broken by the second week of January. We tend to see resolutions as a straight line. I resolve to lose 20 pounds this year.  When we inevitably fail, we have to start at the beginning. 

Judaism teaches us about teshuvah. Teshuvah means to return. We are invited into the process of redressing a deficiency. We reflect, we learn, we desire change, and we do the work necessary to hit the mark. If we miss it the first time, we can circle back and find it again.

With that in mind, here are some very Jewish things I'd like to do better for the secular New Year. Some are silly, and some are less so. 

1. Return to a synagogue in person. Three years is a long time to be withdrawn from a Kehillah Kedosha with only a virtual presence. It's time.

2. Eat some latkes when it isn't Chanukah. Fried foods and carbs be damned.

3. Make more challah.

4. Host a Shabbat dinner for friends.

5. Care more about the trees. (The 800 or so that Premier DoFo wants to remove at Ontario Place for a ridiculous spa is a good start.)

6. Be more consciously aware of my neighbours and neighbourhood. 

7. Participate in small acts of Tikkun Olam, the restoration of the world, either with my presence or my donations.

8. Be kinder. Kindness costs nothing and means everything.

9. Bubby the hell out of my granddaughters.

10. Find and enable my patience gene.

11. Attend the GUCI camp reunion in August. Camp friends are forever friends.

Happy 2023. Find your joy and make it work for you.

Turning Sixty In The Technology Age

I must stress at the outset of this post that I am not dissing my parents. They are capable seniors living in a digital age that is not fully designed for their needs. The stories I am about to tell you in this missive are true, but I am not ridiculing them. I am simply stating their truth.

I am about to turn the page on another decade, and I must say that I am very stressed at the prospect. Sixty. It is a really big-sounding number. SIXTY! I often roll it around in my mouth and try it on for size, but it isn't fitting. It is like a bra that is two cup sizes too small. SIXTY F***ING YEARS OLD!

Yes, I am aware that the alternative sucks. Yes, I am aware that I don't look sixty. (Yesterday, I was told by someone not that much older than that throat-catching number that she thought I was forty-five. She is my new best friend.) Yes, I am aware that age is simply a number on the calendar and that you are only as old as you feel. (Whoever said that probably only lived to fifty-nine.) Let's be frank. Sixty is a big freaking number. 60!

Nobody can claim that you have half of your life in front of you at sixty. When scientists talk about things that will occur by 2050, I do the math and realize that my odds of seeing those things happen are slim. The Divine Spirit willing, Younger Son will be sixty in 2050. Holy Shit. None of this is meant to depress you, dear reader, but I am simply being realistic. Sixty is a big freaking number.

Many things have impressed this reality upon me over the last eighteen months. Some of them were simply age questions. For example, I couldn't get my fourth Covid vaccination for months because I wasn't sixty. Sixty was that magical age line for the government between protecting older people and those of us not there yet. I wasn't old enough. Sixty is the age when my out-of-country insurance will increase. I was fifty-nine when I left Canada, so the premiums were less. Next year, watch me hit the stratosphere. 

But, nothing has convinced me more of my age issues than dealing with my parents and theirs. My parents are amazing people. They are both in their mid-eighties, live independently, exercise regularly, and handle all of their own banking, shopping, cooking, and medical needs. They both have a decent amount of computer/smartphone literacy in that they have a basic understanding of email, online banking, texting, FaceTime, Zoom, and (God help me) social media. But my octogenarian parents are still trying to learn these skills at an age when the outside world assumes that everyone understands everything and the never-ending technological changes.

Simply put, technology for people of a certain age is a bitch. We laugh at their ineptitude, but it isn't at all funny. When I tried to explain to my dad that he couldn't actually "call" an UBER, he was befuddled. When I tried to explain to my mom that her cellphone wasn't operating correctly down here in the Southern Home because her service provider was a shitty company, she couldn't understand the difference between a service provider and her actual handset. She asked The Husband to look at her phone as if that would change the problem. When I asked my dad to call said shitty service provider and deal with the situation, he kibbitzed with the operator until they lied to him and told him everything was fixed. I have spent hours lately fixing their cable, internet, and cell phones and updating all of their devices. And here's the thing. I AM NOT MUCH BETTER AT ANY OF THIS THAN THEY ARE. I married a techie and birthed one; I am not one. And don't even get me started on lost and forgotten passwords. Is it all caps or lowercase? Did you use numbers or symbols? Did you write it down anywhere? Did you save the password with facial recognition? Do you use facial recognition? The possibilities and computations are endless. (We are beginning the labourious task of documenting all of their passwords in a notebook. It will take a while.)

To make matters worse, my wonderful brother bought them new phones before they came south and set everything up for them. And yet, they are still using their old phones occasionally because some critical apps, like my dad's hearing aides, are only useable in Canada and can't be duplicated in the U.S. app store. And...we need access to the Canadian app store from down here which we don't have. Do better, Apple.

I am in technology hell. 

Last week, The Husband and I spent two hours with a Breezeline technician because the modem in my Other Dad's condo was fried. He has yet to arrive, and we wanted to ensure everything was copacetic before he came. I had spent over an hour on the phone with Breezeline a few days before explaining that the modem was fried. After they disconnected me twice, I insisted on the in-person visit. The technician did indeed replace the modem, but he had to reset all of the network passwords. He wasn't permitted to change the network name or password to something more personal, so he left instructions with The Husband on how to do it. But you can't use an iPhone to do it. He stressed this. It will lock you out of the network. The next day, The Husband and I took his laptop to Other Dad's condo to quickly reset the name and password. 

Um...no!

It wasn't possible to do it over the internet even though we were connected to the WiFi. It locked us out of the system. Thanks to the Divine Spirit for my techie. He hardwired Other Dad's desktop computer directly into the modem so that he could access the network. But...his wireless mouse and keyboard were dead, logical after a hiatus of several months. So, he had to plug them into the wall to charge. Three hours later, we were back in his unit to change the password and network name. Without The Husband's knowledge and skill, we would have been fucked.

My brother sent me an email last month warning me that my parents' email verification would change in December. All that we needed to do was input their passwords for their email. That and update all their devices to the latest iOS and find all those passwords to access them. My dad last updated his iPad 45 weeks ago. I'm fucking serious. 45 weeks. The updates took a while. So far, their email is still working. Pray for me.

I have an excellent idea for a business. Tech support that is specifically designed for seniors. Not the Geek Squad, which expects you to understand the basics and employs less than adequate people. I'm talking about a tech support who will come to your home and deal with everything, from password retrieval to how to program your digital TV recorder. Don't tell them how to do it, just do it for them. Don't offer them explanations and instructions; order that UBER for them. The employees' prerequisites need to include Job's patience, a love of people (my dad will make them coffee, and my mom will ply them with chocolate chunk cookies), an aversion to judgement, and an understanding nature. We expect our seniors to be able to navigate new apps and phones every month. It is a loser's game. Let's find a way to make things easy for them. They are twentieth-century people living in a twenty-first-century world. Only some people have access to a techie.

I see myself in my parents. I fear the day when I fear technology. I am scared that there will come a time when it is all just too complicated. I don't want to burden my techies any more than my parents wish to burden theirs. Every time something goes haywire, I hear the exhaustion in my mother's voice. "Two years ago, I could do it all," she says. She's right. But two years is still two years. We don't get younger.

Sixty is a big freaking number. I'm not expecting sympathy. I'm blessed. But I need to acknowledge the fears before I embrace the excitement. That post is coming before the end of the month. The fears are real. This, too, shall I overcome. 

. 

Go Vote

Tomorrow is election day across Ontario. Tomorrow we choose the leaders involved with our most personal municipal decisions over the next four years. Tomorrow, we citizens choose our mayors, councillors, and school board trustees. It is democracy in its purest form, yet it is a right that too many of us take for granted. In 2018, only 41% of Torontonians chose to exercise their franchise. That number was way down from the 2014 vote, which saw almost 55%. (In fairness, that was the year we turned out to turf The Fords.)

By all accounts, this mayoral election is a slam dunk, so says the media, which has pretty much abdicated its responsibility to hold the current office-holder to account for his record. John Tory hasn't held a single news conference during this election cycle, and he has only participated in a paltry two debates, both held on weekday afternoons. He has spent most of his time campaigning for friendly and vulnerable councillors who will continue to support his agenda. (Whatever that might be because he hasn't laid out a single new policy initiative, nor has he pointed to a single accomplishment after eight years in office.) That said, his most involved challenger is Gil Peñalosa, a city planner with zero political experience and a raft of great city-building ideas but no real thoughts on how to implement them. We Torontonians are poorer for the lack of a strong challenger to the mayor and a proper debate about our city, and it has allowed him to probably coast to an easy victory tomorrow.

This ridiculous coronation is our fault. We have allowed ourselves to buy into the idea that the man who saved the city from another disastrous term of Ford is indeed a good mayor and city manager. He is a decent man and was a decent manager during Covid, but his failures are everywhere, from overflowing garbage bins to a white elephant rebuild of the Gardiner. Simply put, John Tory is a terrible politician, but that isn't the point of this post. This post is designed to inform you of what you accept if you choose not to vote.

If you choose not to vote...

* You are saying that you are perfectly fine with the homeless situation in our city.

* You are comfortable with the state of our roads, transit, and parks. 

* You are ok with the lack of a strong Vision Zero plan to address the carnage on our roads that claims the lives of pedestrians and cyclists on a daily basis.

* You are fine with police abdicating their traffic enforcement role and allowing the police budget to balloon out of control.

* You think essential services like garbage bin collections, broken water fountains, shuttered public bathrooms, pothole repair, tree limb collection, and pruning are functioning at a high level.

* You are content with the shuttering of city programs because of staffing shortages and poor compensation.

* You are happy with the province turning the Ontario Place grounds into a luxury spa rather than increasing our downtown greenspace and not having a mayor express his opinion.

* You are perfectly content with a stormwater management plan that doesn't exist. 

* You thought that the clearing of snow from city roads and sidewalks during the mega storms last season was done efficiently.

These are just a few of the things that you are abdicating responsibility for if you skip voting tomorrow. 

I can't make you go out and vote. I can only hope that if this post moves you, you will rethink your apathy. 

Vote in whatever municipality you live tomorrow. Vote for your city. Vote for a better quality of life for everybody.

We are all in this together. 

 

We Just Ate Our Way Across Paris

Can we talk about food?

I am not a foodie. I have lived a vegetarian lifestyle more often than not for more than forty years. I have tremendous problems with dairy. So many things cause my digestive tract to revolt. But, early on in this trip, I decided to eat the foods I wanted, swallow copious amounts of Lactaid, and let the chips fall where they may. I mean, after all, this is Paris. How can one walk through the winding neighbourhoods and NOT stop at a boulangerie, a fromagerie, or a simple café for chocolat chaud? 

As The Professional Volunteer stated, "When in Paris, all the rules are out the window." 

And so...I ate the cheese. And it hurt. And I ate the croissants and the pain chocolat. And I suffered. And I ate the pain perdu made with croissants and tons of butter. And I farted. And I luxuriated in the baguettes slathered in butter. And I didn't care about the calories or the carbs because it was delicious. And I ordered an apple clafouti to delight in. And I finished every single bite. And we splurged on macarons because it is a moral imperative. And I drank champagne at the Moulin Rouge. And got a bit tipsy. And I ate a charcuterie board filled with cheese and fruit. And my lactose intolerance was very angry with me. It is simply impossible to come to Paris and not eat. If you can come here and stick to your diet, you are better humans than I am. But here's the thing. Why would you want to? I am in one of the world's great food capitals, and I'll be damned if I am going to let Jewish stomach issues or eating plans based on carb deprivation stop me. I figure that we are walking our asses off and that exercise is helping. My clothes still fit, and I am happy. I think that counterbalances the crazy snacking. My doctor may have something to say about my food porn excursion when I see her on Wednesday for my yearly physical, but I'll take the hit. "Come to Paris," they said. "Eat your way across the city."

Much has happened since I last posted, but I will hit the highlights at the bottom. Tonight is our final evening, and I just wanted to say how beautiful this trip has been. The weather has been close to perfect, except for a miserable rainy day yesterday, and even that didn't deter us. How can one go wrong on vacation with good friends, good food, and wondrous sites in one of the most beautiful cities in the world? I will count myself amongst the very fortunate.

A few random thoughts.

* If you plan on coming to Paris, play the tourist. It is really fun to do it that way. We went to the Moulin Rouge and had the best time. It is so kitsch and goofy, and yet, it was a blast. And the food was surprisingly good.  

* I can't imagine coming here and not visiting the galleries. Every single one was spectacular. We capped off our art tours with a visit to Giverny and Monet's house and gardens. The Husband figures he took at least one-thousand photos there. The rain stopped and was glistening in the gardens. I can't adequately describe it. It is a must-see. Monet did what most of us would love to do. He created his ideal space, then took that inspiration and put it on canvas. Simply stunning. We then drove to Auvers-Sur-Oise to visit where Van Gogh spent his final summer. We ate in the same café that he did and visited his room upstairs. We walked many of the same fields that acted as his muse in those final seventy days. He was incredibly prolific during this period, painting eighty canvases in seventy days. We stopped by the cemetery where he rests on our way out of town.

* I am less than enamoured by churches, but I must say that Sainte-Chapelle is a wow. The stained glass windows are off the charts. The chapel is small, but the windows left me breathless. The depictions of familiar bible stories had me searching the panels. I was less enthused by the illustrations of Moses with horns, but I cannot change some things. 

* As of last night, we had walked close to ninety kilometres. Add in a few more for today, and I am truly exhausted. I feel good about my exercise between the stairs and the uneven streets. Not a bad trip for activity.

* I loved Montemarte and the Jewish quarter. Rue de Rosiers was simply lovely, even in the rain. Every store seemed to have a mezuzah on the door, and we had terrific falafel. There are several memorials to the martyred Jews of France, and somehow we stumbled across them all. We even saw plaques dedicated to children at a school who didn't return from the camps. My heart was in my throat. We climbed to the top of the mountain and were gifted with a lovely view of the city. The Jews of Paris have done an excellent job of keeping the flame alive.

* As I said earlier, the weather has been near perfect. The rain yesterday was kind of yucky. We didn't let it stop us and managed to get to Sainte-Chapelle, Place de Vosges, a parfumerie for Twin Son's Better Half shopping, and Victor Hugo's house. The Husband and I were so tired last evening we came back to the hotel with a baguette and butter and ate dinner on the floor of Twin Son and His Better Half's room. Worked for me.

* I sometimes think that certain things are done explicitly for the tourists. In Montmarte, I saw an older gentleman playing La Vie en Rose on the accordion. Touristy but effective. I gave him a few Euros.

* This is an expensive city. Don't kid yourselves. There are ways to do it without breaking the bank, but it is costly. There is a refinery strike ongoing here, and it is pushing gas prices to crazy heights. The lineups for gas remind me of the 70s. If you think inflation is bad where you live, you should be in Europe now. It is off the charts.

And so, Paris 2022 draws to a close. We head to the airport tomorrow with too many calories in our stomachs and songs in our hearts. 

Au revoir. A bientôt.

Salut!

Monet's gardens

The sunflowers are a nice touch.

The stained glass at Sainte-Chappel

This is pain perdu made out of croissants

A Few Stories From Paris

We have done a great deal since the last time I wrote. Museum visits, a trip out to Versailles, a creepy tour of the catacombs, and a hike up Montmarte. At the bottom, I will give some highlights in my quick thoughts portion of the post, but for now, I wanted to tell a few short stories of human interest.

A couple of days ago, while we were touring the Louvre, The Husband and I happened upon an elderly gentleman who was taking a breather in the Dutch Masters' rooms. Twin Son wanted to view some Rembrandt paintings, so after we had pretty much exhausted our initial tour with Carinne, she took us to the other side of the museum to see the great man's work. While we were there, The Husband nudged me as he wanted me to look at the older gentleman sitting next to him. The man had to be in his eighties with a face that looked like it had seen a lot. Upon a closer look, it was evident to both of us that he wasn't in very good shape. He was slightly stooped, and while he was making a concerted effort to look his best, his jacket had definitely seen better days. There were tears under both sleeves and across his shoulders. He sat quietly in the Dutch room, dozing. None of the docents bothered him as he took his afternoon siesta, and I wondered if he was a regular visitor to the museum. As Carinne explained some of Rembrandt's work to us, I was captivated by the old man and wondered aloud to The Husband what his story might be. This old man's face stuck with me as we departed from The Louvre. 

Yesterday afternoon, we met up with Carinne again for our private tour of Musée D'Orsay. We were terribly excited to get up close and personal with The Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Honestly, this tour has been circled on my calendar for months. The brushstrokes and vibrant colours simply jumped off the canvases and did happy dances on my retinas. I absolutely love this period of artwork. The great works of Manet, Monet, Cezanne, Pisarro, Degas, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gaughin, and Toulouse-Lautrec are so plentiful here that I was experiencing a type of sensory overload. I honestly didn't know where to look first. I was like the proverbial kid in the candy store. I was recounting a story about my grandfather and a Degas copy (I'll tell you that story below) when I looked up and saw him again, the same gentleman in the same torn jacket. The coincidence was striking. Once again, he was just sitting in Impressionist Room, taking in the art and the people, and nobody bothered him. As we were leaving the museum, The Husband pointed him out to me for the final time. I have made up a dozen stories about this old dude in my mind. Does he spend all of his days in the museums? Who pays for him? Is he a senior art historian? Maybe he is a retired professor? Perhaps he is a widower and remembers happy days spent in the museums with his dear wife? I honestly have no idea, but I cannot get this gent out of my mind. The odd thing is that I believe that if I went back to one of those two museums today, I think we could find him. A small story from our time in Paris.

A few random thoughts.

* I promised you the story of my grandfather and the Degas. My grandparents had a large painting in their living room that looked like a copy of one of Degas' ballet scenes. It was a recreation of a ballet master holding court during a rehearsal. It was over their sofa, and the memory of it was embedded in my cerebral cortex. Many years later, when The Husband visited my grandfather for the first time, he saw the painting and noted it was done by a cousin of his who had survived the concentration camps. He must have been influenced by Monsieur Degas. I would have loved to have been able to keep that painting, but a surly aunt descended on my grandparents' house after their deaths and absconded with it. I have no idea where it is today. Seeing Degas' paintings of the ballet school in Musée D'Orsay left a large lump in my throat. 

* I forgot this little tale of our visit to Monet's Water Lilies. As we sat in the room breathing and taking in the atmosphere in silent contemplation, a guy sitting next to The Husband was scrolling through his phone, watching cat videos. I have nothing else to add to that atrocity.

* The Palace at Versailles is the definition of opulence. Every room is more garish than the last. I wonder if Agent Orange got his sense of style from Louis XIV. The gardens, on the other hand, are breathtaking. I could spend weeks there.

* We took a jaunt over to the catacombs, and I will admit to being more than a bit freaked out. I don't do bones well. Over six million souls are entombed down there; honestly, it is a really cool place to visit. I just felt like a voyeur disturbing the dead. As we made our way to the surface, one of the security people checked my backpack for any bones that might have been absconded. Why would anyone think to do that?

* The Pantheon was a bit more my speed. Death with dignity. The tombs of great French writers, thinkers, scientists, and politicians are laid to rest here. I got more than a little excited seeing the graves of Marie and Phillipe Curie and Josephine Baker. 

* We have had excellent guides on this trip. Carinne, who The Professional Volunteer encountered during an online experience, was truly incredible for the art museums. If anybody is coming this way and would like a private tour through any of the many art museums of Paris, contact me offline for her information. Today, we arranged a private tour of Versailles and Bertrand, our guide, was funny, knowledgeable, and a real character. I have taken tours worldwide, but I think doing it privately is the way to go if you can make it work. We have learned and seen so much.

* The Professional Volunteer spent part of her youth in France and has many warm memories. Thanks to The Divine Spirit for her and Twin Son's Better Half's ability to speak French. Things would be far more difficult without the two of them and their language skills. While she was here many years ago, The Professional Volunteer had a portrait of herself done in Montmarte. With a photograph of that picture in hand, she found another sketch artist in the same area to draw her today. It was a charming nod to a memory of her parents.

* I am not usually a sweets eater, but eating French macarons in Paris is a must. The shop windows at the boulangeries are art. 

A few more days to come with a couple more posts to enjoy. 

The old gentleman

Van Gogh Self Portrait

Degas' dancers

Paris at night

Versailles

Some of the 100,000 acres of gardens at Versailles

Retrieving a memory

Art Touched by God

People often ask me if I believe in God.

Aside from it being an extraordinarily personal question, there is never a simple answer to deliver. I have spoken in this space about finding God in the natural beauty around us. I see God in my granddaughters' faces. But today, I remembered that there is something in a talented genius that makes me believe they had been touched by something divine.

We have spent most of the last two days here immersed in the power of artistic inspiration. We were awestruck by our visit to the Eiffel Tower. The intricacies of this engineering marvel had us wondering how somebody came up with an idea like this. Designed initially as an artistic icon, a gigantic piece of street art, if you will, there is really no other possible use for the tower. And yet it has become the cultural touchstone of this city. The interlocking beams and gears made me think of those K'nex sets my boys used to play with. As we ascended to the top and looked over the thriving city, I understood what Monsieur Eiffel was going for. He wanted the citizens of Paris to look upon their home and remember how they all fit together as one community. When they see the tower, they know that they are home.

It is difficult to imagine Paris without its historic and thriving art scene. Visitors come from around the world to observe some of civilization's most significant pieces and works. During our visit to the Rodin gallery, I posed the question, "Am I moved by his masterpiece Le Penseur because it is iconic, or is it iconic because I am moved by it?" In other words, has pop culture so profoundly appropriated some of these works that we have misplaced our sense of awe when we see them? I felt the same way when we squeezed in at the Louvre to view the Mona Lisa this afternoon. Does she deserve her status as the "world's most famous painting?" Carinne, the private guide we hired for our afternoon at the Louvre, posited a theory. She believes that Mona has become so famous not because she is Da Vinci's best painting but because she was stolen in 1913 and disappeared for more than three years. When she was finally recovered, her story was widely covered in the press, making her far more famous than she deserved. Carinne steered us to a few other of Leonardo's works, and when she pointed out his use of brush strokes and light, it was far easier to imagine how his gift might have been divinely inspired. And while I loved Rodin's Thinker, I was far more captivated by his busts of Victor Hugo and Clemenceau. It is fascinating to realize that what we think we love isn't that which is most popular.

I never doubted how I would feel at Musée de L'Orangerie. This is the place that houses Monet's Water Lilies. It is difficult to articulate how I felt sitting in the two rooms accommodating the eight massive canvases. Offered to the French state by Monet following the Armistice in November of 1918 as a symbol of peace, the Water Lilies are considered to be one of the seminal works of the twentieth century. The rooms were designed to Monet's specifications so that the viewers would have a contemplative environment to view the work. I could have spent days there. Every time I looked at a different part of the painting, I saw something different. I was drawn into his colours and natural beauties with a soothing calm that almost frightened me. I have always been drawn to the Impressionists and have seen many works in person, but this experience was life-affirming. There is beauty in the world, and God certainly touched the hand of Claude Monet. 

A few random thoughts.

* We have walked our feet off in these first four days. According to my wildly inaccurate Apple Watch, we have logged about 45KM on foot. After hours in the Louvre this afternoon, I thought I might require a foot transplant.

* I have still not gotten over the thrill of sitting in an outdoor cafe on the streets of this city. I don't suppose that I ever will.

* Quiche, crepes, and clafoutis taste better when eaten in Paris.

* I was shocked at the mall at the base of the Louvre. There were times when it felt like Yorkdale. Welcome to the twenty-first century. 

* Nobody does public space and green space like the Parisians. Watching people sitting in properly maintained parks, reading newspapers, having coffees, and just generally enjoying the outside makes me long for what Toronto has yet to discover. 

* I love the multiculturalism of Paris. People from all over have made this place their home. I have heard many languages. I know that France has had issues integrating immigrants, but it makes me happy to see them try. 

Venus de Milo

Le Penseur

I Love Paris In The Autumn

There is an exhilaration that comes with travel. The excitement of seeing new things, the tastes and smells of foreign delicacies, and the sheer power of willing oneself to try the once considered ridiculous. 

There are also tremendous hassles with travel. The cattle call of airlines, the sleep deprivation, and the inability to remember overpacking for a trip is never a good idea.

I have a mantra when I travel. Go with the flow. If you expect to sail through customs, you probably won't, so breathe, wait patiently, and go with the flow. If it is your wish to not hit rush hour traffic in Paris, you absolutely will, so go with the flow. If you expect a smooth ride to the airport and then get rear-ended on the Gardiner Expressway, well...what choice did we really have? 

I am chalking up the limo accident as an omen. If this is the worst thing that happens on this trip, I will take it. Nobody was hurt except the car of the moron behind us, and the driver was so sweet that we volunteered to be witnesses for him should he have issues with his boss or the insurance company.

The other little hitch in our travel has been the presence of this virus that just won't let go. The coughing and headaches have been persistent, but neither of us is letting them stop us. Like I said, go with the flow. (in this case, a nasal flow.)

We arrived in the City of Lights at daybreak, and after a bit of kerfuffle at customs, we were off in a taxi to our hotel in the very funky and happening ninth arrondissement. (The Follies Bergére is around the corner from us. We can hear the excitement through our windows.) We couldn't check in until three in the afternoon, so rather than risk sleeping on a park bench, we headed out to a corner cafe to grab some breakfast. The weather was perfect, so we sat outside, ordered a baguette and a beverage and soaked up the atmosphere. It was really enticing to think that the six of us were having breakfast on the streets of Paris. There is nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, like a French baguette with butter. I have been off most carbs for a long time now, but what is the point of being here if I'm not going to indulge in some of the best food in the world. Of course, my French is stalled at a grade thirteen level. My Spanish is far superior, but it is easy to confuse the two languages. I ended up ordering a petit dejeuner para dos personas. My embarrassment knows no bounds.

We walked our feet off. We wandered through dozens of Parisian streets and neighbourhoods on little more than a few hours of sleep. The architectural marvel that is Haussman's design leaves me breathless. It is easy to get lost on the narrow streets and the crazy curves, yet I can't think of a better way to pass a day than getting lost in Paris. I am enamoured with the white stone and marble and the wrought-iron balconies. The nineteenth-century cobblestones are still evident in many areas and have been melded together with modern asphalt. Paris is an extremely modern city that maintains its old-world charm. That first day, we simply meandered through town. We found ourselves down by the Seine, and I half-expected Gene Kelly to pop up and dance with Leslie Caron on the left bank. There is a reason why so many songs and movies have been written about Paris. It is simply a city that charms. As the Professional Volunteer remarked as we strolled down the Champs-Elysees, "I am walking on the Champs-Elysees, eating a pain-Chocolat, on a warm October Saturday, with good friends. What could be wrong?

A few quick observations.

* For a city known for its food, we are having some issues finding good vegetarian cuisine. I feel the need to explain to people that vegetarian doesn't mean tofu cooked in beef broth.

* I am desperately seeking a Diet Coke. They seem to have gone missing in Paris. They have regular and Coke Zero, but the manna of my existence is awol. The habit may be kicked.

* It is unseasonably warm and sunny. I am not complaining, but I didn't pack for summer. That said, autumn in Paris is trés magnifique. The leaves are starting to turn, and the parks are all dressed. I am writing this with the windows open and a warm breeze wafting through the room. What a lovely time of year. 

* The Batobus is a marvellous innovation. For the price of twenty Euros, you can hop on and off a boat down the Seine, stopping at points of interest, all while viewing Paris from the water. We could see the construction of Notre Dame from an angle not visible on land. The entire back side of the cathedral is missing. It is impossible to describe the devastation adequately on television. It needs to be seen. That said, the reconstruction is well underway, and it is massive. It could take decades.

* My friends indulged me and trekked a bit to find Shakespeare and Company, the first English language book store in Paris. It was founded in 1919 by American Sylvia Beach. It attracted some of the great literary ex-pats of the time and became a kind of salon. Ms. Beach was the original publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922 when no one else would dare touch the controversial novel. I felt like a visit there was a bit like visiting Mecca.

* This is one expensive city, and yet, so is Toronto. But I feel like Paris has earned it and Toronto hasn't yet.