A Weekend in Paris

It was a lazy July afternoon in Paris as I arrived on the train from Brussels. I knocked on the hotel room door with a sigh of relief as Holli cracked the door with her sleepy eyes and hinted smile. She melted in my arms in an embrace.

Later that evening, we found a quaint little restaurant called La Petite Hostellerie nestled on a quiet side street. They served a menu of the day of traditional French cuisine for 15 Euro. We toasted our glasses of Cotes du Rhone and imbibed into the evening relaying the week's events including the London bombing that had occured just days before. I still crashed hard that night, and I don't think I've slept better in ages.

We woke up Saturday morning with a new found passion and headed for the Notre Dame. Though I'd seen it two years ago, it still it evoked the same strange feeling as before. The gothic architecture, flying buttresses, the echoing chambers, the statues, reliefs, rot iron fences, and gargoyles all have a romantic decay that exists in imagination. Throngs of people swarmed the church like bees, taking pictures & capturing images so they could go brag to their friends. It's all a bit chaotic and anticlimactic. Afterall, the real thing never lives up to the imagination.

We took the Metro to MontMartre, and entered into the artist colony where the "starving artist" lived up to the cliche. Holli & I walked through the narrow streets as hungry artists with thick French accents desperate to find their muse cried for her attention, "Beautiful lady, Mademoiselle!" Their penciled stained hands waved in her direction and their easels were ready to be planted anywhere on the cobblestone streets. Then as we advanced into the courtyard, we saw why. There were dozens of wild haired artists stuffing the square like a chicken coop. People gathered around peering over shoulders to catch a glimpse of their paintings, sketches, & water colors. Their art was a bit too commoditized for me, so we headed back downtown to have sherbets on the Seine river before dinner.


-Marvin