Paris Is Always a Good Idea

Not sure why, but I’ve always had a love of travel.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my family had moved seven or eight times before I reached puberty. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that we moved to a town with an Air Force Base. We weren’t connected with the Air Force, but I got a new set of friends every year or two. They came from far and wide and left for other environs routinely. Their origins and lives and intrigued me.

Then again, maybe it’s just me. I’m curious and I like seeing the world and meeting its people in all their variations. Turns out that people have a lot of differences in various parts of the planet, but they have a lot more in common.

When I was a kid, travel meant that my Dad behind the wheel on our way to visit with relatives. We traveled in pretty small circles. Those circles got ever so much larger when my brother joined the Navy and we got to visit him in places where we could dip our toes in the ocean and listen to people speak with different accents. Still America, but different from home.

We got to visit my brother in places where we could dip our toes in the ocean and listen to people speak with different accents.

Then I got older, went away to college, graduated, got a job. I was young. I was poor. I hitchhiked about the country, seeing more and more of it. As my economic fortunes got better in steps, I took buses, trains, and drove long road trips, exploring what America had to offer. Then the day arrived when, married, employed, reaching for middle class status, I discovered airplanes. Flew to all parts of the country and finally…..off to Europe. England first.

England was a piece of cake. Don’t get me wrong. It was different from the U.S. and Canada, but they spoke the same language. Even rented a car and drove about the English countryside on the left side of the road. Easy peasy, except for shifting gears with my left hand. Some of us are not just right-handed. We’re realllllly right-handed. I got by with a little help from my friends….OK my wife. I clutched. She shifted on cue. We got by.

I clutched. She shifted on cue. We got by.

Then we took the train down to Dover. Took a ferry across the English Channel to Calais. Caught another train to Gare du Nord in Paris. Got on the Metro and emerged, dazzled and confused, on the Left Bank at rush hour. “Faite attention!” Our firrst words in French. Welcome to Paris.

Stumbled around. Got clucked at by a desk clerk at our chosen hotel for presuming to check in without a reservation. (Got a room anyway.) Knocked off a container of four eggs in a tiny aisle in a tiny grocery store and was not only made to pay for them, but carry them out with me, to immediately be disposed of in a streetside trashcan.

Discovered that after two years of high school French and two more years of college French I couldn’t understand a single word of rapid-fire Parisian French. Plus I was petrified to speak any actual French myself for fear of being ridiculed by Parisians with an attitude. Finally spoke my first French words to a French person when we got caught in the rain and dashed into a shop to purchase “un petit parapluie noir pour soixante quinze Francs.” Needed the umbrella for about five minutes before it stopped raining, but I’d crossed that hurdle, spoke a few words in French. Woo ho

Knocked off a container of four eggs in a tiny aisle in a tiny grocery store and was not only made to pay for them, but carry them out with me.

The trip was not all struggle. Discovered French restaurants (tasty). Discovered the Jardin du Luxembourg. And we discovered an artistic treasure at the west end of Les Tuileries, Le Musee de L’Orangerie, a small little museum of impressionists. C’est magnifique. Monet’s lily pond paintings are huge. In contrast, “The Mona Lisa,” ensconced at Le Louvre, is a teensy little painting and to my taste, not all that impressive. Musee d’Orsay, the Victor Hugo Museum, the Rodin sculpture garden, Le Tour Eiffel, L’Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, the Seine, on and on. Insert heavy sigh.

Now many years later, I have traveled the world. I have trod the earth on every continent, save Antarctica. (May still make Antarctica. Not dead yet.) I have seen the Aurora Borealis directly overhead on an evening in downtown Reykjavik. I have climbed Les Grand Dunes in the Sahara Desert. Sea kayaking in Palau, mountain biking in the Andes, snorkeling off the coast of Belize, and watching the sun rise over the Moai — the big carved stone heads on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Lived on a tropical island for two years. Traveled west to east around the world for one year. The world is my home and I have seen a lot of it.

And now, I sit at my desk looking out at Lake Michigan and notice a cocktail napkin, left over from some occasion, who knows which? It says, “Paris is always a good idea.” The quote is attributed to Audrey Hepburn.

Thought about this and l must admit that Ms. Hepburn had a point. After all that traveling and lovely flights to exotic places, awful bus rides in Thailand, Morocco, and Croatia, and rented cars driven on the left side of the road, after riding public transit of all stripes in cities around the globe, after meeting people in all corners of the planet, after eating local cuisine in countries too numerous to list (You can skip the grasshopper tacos in Mexico.) I come back to that one thought. Yes, Paris is always a good idea.

After seeing the world, I come back to that one thought. Yes, Paris is always a good idea.

Why? I can sum it up with a little story. We were in a bistro on the Left Bank, and I was perusing the wine list. Often in U.S. restaurants the lower-priced wines can be iffy. So I was hesitant to go the cheap route. The waiter came by and asked if I’d chosen a wine. I pointed out one of the cheaper wines and asked, “How about this? Is this a good wine?” He looked at me with a puzzled expression and said, “But of course. If it were not good, I would not serve it to you.”

Now that’s a Parisian experience in a nutshell.

“If it were not good, I would not serve it to you.”

Art, food, strolling in the parks, ducking into little shops to browse. Paris just has that “Je ne sais quoi.” And for my money, Paris is always a good idea.