Paris 2011

 

What a welcome escape Paris has been from what has become a series of difficult months that had a succession of loss. Losing a dear friend, Suzanne, who fell to her death while mountain guiding in Alaska, Brenda who passed due to complications from a routine surgery, Karma our dear fourteen year old Italian Greyhound who came quickly to the end of his life, and Doris, my stepmother, who faces Stage IV cancer at 82 years of age. Paris takes one away. We took a much slower daily pace than last year’s visit. It allowed us to revisit some of our favorite museums with more focus and time. Time to sit and sip wine in the gardens, have dinner in a small cafe as the rain poured off the eaves, listen to a concert under the towering stain glass in St. Chapelle cathedral, scale the worn stone steps of the towers of Notre Dame, have a Bloody Mary drink at Harry’s New York Bar, walk along the Seine in the afternoons warmth, and spend a late night drinking with our French friends at the small hidden bar Le Onze in the Left Bank. Paris has become familiar and that makes me smile. Paris, France

View from our studio in the 14th.

I lit a candle in prayer in Notre Dame for those lost.