Our paths did not cross that Summer of 1975.

Me: An anxious 19-year old, making my way around the Rive Gauche on a $10-a-day budget from money I’d saved from my factory job in Pennsylvania. My high-school French (3 years, 3 different public schools, B average) gets me in and out of museums and train stations just fine. But do I dare to dream of more? I’m the first person in my family to get a passport, and I am full of wild speculations about where I could go from here. For now I am content to sit quietly in the corner of a cheap student cafeteria with my omelette nature, but one day I’ll have the nerve to face a professional Parisian waiter and cervelle de veaux au beurre noir.

James: 4 years of Episcopalian prep school French, C+ average, such a man of the world at age 22 that hitch hiking from Munich to Genoa with 20 cents in his pocket makes him feel “carefree”. Just out of college (philosophy major) and heading towards his family’s vacation home in Portugal, this Long Island bon vivant is so used to things “falling into place” (like the Summer before his sophomore year at Tulane when he showed up at a Grateful Dead concert in San Francisco without tickets and got miracled) that he’s never spent a day, he tells me now, worrying whether his travels will turn out OK.

But you never know who you'll end up marrying.

It was a rainy Thursday night in Manhattan during a cold Spring, and I was looking at a room full of people I didn’t know at a fine-arts fundraiser. A distinguished looking silver-haired gent in a tweed jacket asked me if I was alone; “Yes,” I said. “So am I,” he told me.
We talked about the funeral he’d been to that afternoon, I told him that I’d stopped off at a record shop on my way to the party to buy a Blow Monkeys CD.

Death, and pop music from the 1980s, are two of my favorite topics of conversation.

He liked that I had long hair and knew how to grade fancy colored diamonds . I liked his smile and, when he drank the caterer’s weird-looking chocolate martinis, his willingness to try new things. We were married a year later.

And then we went to France.

Where We Went:

Paris

Normandy: Giverny, Rouen, Bayeux, Omaha Beach

Brittany: Pontorson, Mont-St.-Michel,St.-Malo, Cancale,Fougeres

Bordeaux: Bordeaux, St.-Emilion, Cotes de Castillon, St.-Philippe- d’Aiguilhe, Rauzon, La Reole, St.-Macaire, Ste.-Foy-la-Grande, Bergerac, Soulac-sur-Mer, Pauillac, St.-Estephe, Vertheuil

Loire Valley: Tours, Azay-le-Rideau, Usse, Langais, Villandry, Rivarennes, Chinon

Chartres

Paris

My first conversation on French soil goes like this:

“There’s no smoking allowed in the airport terminal,” I say, in perfectly good French, to the woman who has lit up a Marlboro in the Arrivals lounge.

The woman looks at me sharply. I point to the sign: Defense de Fumer. She answers me in mocking English. “Zeez distairb you?” she says, exaggerating her surprise that anyone would object to a little cigarette smoke for god’s sake. With disdain she drops the butt to the floor and crushes it with her tiny Roger Vivier ballerina flat.

I could KISS her – for now I know that I have arrived!

Yes, James and I are tourists. But not just ANY kind of tourists. We are post-modern tourists. In Paris, that means that we are flaneurs : flan’er)>noun, French: one who has perfected the art of nonchalance.

Flaneurs are found in abundance in Paris, lolling in its scenic cafes and strolling aimlessly along its beautiful boulevards. They are those happy few who can make doing nothing look like an honorable activity. That’s what James and I want to do in Paris: leave the ancient monuments alone, stay far away from the famous museums, try our best to blend in with world champion flaneurs.

What follows is a diary of our typical flaneurs’ day in Paris.

MORNING

Ours is a mixed marriage: James gets up early and I like to sleep until 8.

In Paris, this works for us: as soon as James hears the street sweepers he's out the door, following the amazing green machine that vacuums debris from the curbs of the 6th arrondissement.

I head out an hour later, to wander the nearby streets. I have to make a crucial decision that will affect the quality of our Parisian experience: I have to choose my morning cafe.

Travel Tip: Paris Doesn't Do Breakfast

You want breakfast, go to London. There you'll find some cozy neighborhood nook that does homage to the magnificent Anglo Saxon institution that we call Breakfast: eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, corn flakes, (oatmeal in season), "chips", fried tomato, juice, coffee/​tea and, of course, hot buttered toast.

The French think so little of breakfast that they don't even have a word for it. They call it le petit dejeuner which means little lunch. What most French people eat for their morning meal is merely a snack: a piece of fruit, a bite of pastry, a few gulps of espresso.

However, there are still a small number of people -- about five percent of the French population -- that honors the old custom of starting the day with a glass of wine, in a ritual that is called tuer le ver, Killing the worm.

This worm is a legendary heart worm, diagnosed several hundred years ago, that suddenly caused the death of a perfectly healthy man. An autopsy and subsequent experiments revealed that the only way to kill this deadly worm was with a dose of wine. So, for a long and healthy life, it is only wise to take the precaution of drinking a medicinal amount of the fruit of the vine each morning. A votre sante.

What I'm looking for is a place where I can kill the worm.

By my third morning in Paris I am a regular at the Café Marche.

While I’m having my first cup of tea of the day an old lady, another regular, arrives and goes behind the bar. She lifts the patron's dog from his basket and gives him a kiss, and takes him to the corner table where she will sit sipping her coffee while cooing to the borrowed dog on her lap.

The tough mecs (they look like butchers, or plumbers) standing at the bar sipping their drinks from tiny pony glasses complain that oh, lala, things are not correct these days. Two young women on their way to work will drop in for a quick chat, making much of their busy-ness, and when they finish their café they will depart hurriedly, kissing each other once, twice, four times and wave, A Bientot, Ciao, Ciao.

Overheard at the café:

A Canadian couple, slumping against each other for support, wearily stirring their espressos.

He says, “We have to budget our money better –
that breakfast cost us $200.00.”

She answers, “The problem is that the kids want to
try one of everything.”

“We also have to stop letting them be in charge of
reading the maps,” he grouses.

“Well, I deserve a pat on the head for not going on
about that,” she says.

He says, “It would be a totally different trip without
the kids.”



“I need exactly 12 sips of wine to get my day
started,” a sunburnt woman in her 40s announces
to her friend.

Since James and I parted company early in the morning, when we meet back at the hotel at 10:00 we have stories to tell.

“I found a poker game,” James says.

“I discovered a shop that sells 200 kinds of honey,” I tell him.

He lifts his day-pack to his shoulder and I stuff my pockets with pens and notebooks and lip gloss and we are ready for our day’s adventure together.

On a street in the Latin Quarter I asked a passer-by to explain to me the name of a shop called Chat Huant. Chat, I know, means cat; but q’est-ce que c’est huant?

The young man answers in English, “She a nigh burr an’ she say huant huant.”

I get it: night bird = owl; the sound an owl makes. Hooting Cat. I wonder how I can consider myself fluent in French and not know the word for hooting.

But I’m happy to have these souvenirs: – a new word, and the way that guy said said “nigh burr”. Will I ever think of owls from now on, and not think of them as "nigh burrs"?

I could live almost anywhere in Paris and be happy, I’m sure, but if I had to choose…

This is the thought that livens up our daily walks, starts a debate as we stroll the streets, searching for the one that could be our new Paris address.

I could live here, on THIS rue, where there's a cat perched on top of a parked car on a hectic shopping street. He bats my hand away every time I reach to pet him – he’s a Paris cat alright – and even the attention from every other passing cat lover doesn’t budge him from his Renault throne.

The Right Bank is where we go window shopping:

Chic: first used during France’s Second Empire (1852 – 1870); original meaning subtlety, from the German schick: tact, skill.

Chic: made up by the French to make the rest of us feel dowdy; the reason why the Fashion Editor of Le Figaro advises that nobody foreign-born should take up residence in Paris before the age of 40 so that one has had the time to establish a strong sense of self, sufficient to withstand the snotty sales girls at Hermes.

Le Midi -- LUNCHTIME

Sample Menus -- "Restauration Scholaire"
School lunch in France:


Moules marinieres
Salad d’endive aux noix
Longe de pork au four
Brunoise de legumes
Éclair

Celeri remoulade
Goulasch de beouf
Pave du cloin sauce provencale
Petits pois carottes
Magdelena chocolate

Macedoine mayonnaise
Boeuf bourguignon
Choux fleur béchamel
Camembert
Gaufre patissiere au sucre

Our own five-course picnic lunch starts with a visit to the local marche.

L’Heure Vert The Green Hour Is neither green, nor an hour

There is a tradition in Paris that the hours between 5 and 7 o’clock ("The Green Hour") are set aside for amour. This is when married lovers rush to each others’ embrace, when a modern Romeo meets his Juliet, when flaneurs like us hit the cafe, to watch the spectacle of life that quickens the pace of Paris in the late afternoon.

Travel Tip: Wine is not thirst-quenching. Ask the waiter for whatever is le plus frais, frais americaine (in an apologetic tone of voice) and he will understand that you want the coldest drink they have and no skimping on the ice. It usually costs twice as much as un coup de pif (slang: a glass of wine, like the one James thriftily orders) but that’s because the French think cold drinks are bad for the health and they only want to save you from yourself.

Boulevard Manners

"Staring – more than staring, a cool, cynical appraisement – is one of the privileges which the Parisian most prizes."
E. V. Lucas, in his book: A Wanderer in Paris, 1909


Most Parisians are, of course, excellent flaneurs, because Parisians understand the esthetics of the sidewalk. That’s why they flock to cafes, to cultivate the landscape of urban life right there on the pavement.

But it takes some getting used to, this open-air theater and the frank interest that Parisians take in one another there. The unselfconscious gaze they direct at anyone who catches their attention, the way they study a face or a cravat, a well-put together ensemble or a beautiful coif, as if it were on display at the Louvre -- some visitors never get the hang of it:

“A course and disgusting liberty” is how the wonderfully cranky English tourist E. V. Lucas (above) described this Parisian practice of seeing and being seen; “The French may have wide streets and spacious vistas,” he warned fellow tourists, “but their matches are costly and they won’t light.”

I sit in the cafe, and make quick sketches of the people around me:

Overheard in the café:

“I’ve always been a seeker,” a young woman intones to a young man.

“I detest injustice,” says a serious young woman to a table full of other serious young people.

“Worse than Ishtar? Worse than Waterworld?” A young man demands to know.

A woman leans back from her cup of coffee and sighs, “I’m so screwed up. My mother is a Methodist and my father is a Catholic.” A little later I hear her companion explain, “I can’t worship anything that rusts, rots, or dies.”

“Some people have problems on purpose, and some people have problems by accident,” an old man explains to his companion – daughter? Amanuensis? “I have problems on purpose,” he continues, “Ones I can fix.” She says, “I have problems by accident – they’re more interesting.”

A woman on a cell phone: “I did not promise him anything like that! Stop yelling!”


"The Café: An open house, at street level; the place of the comfortable living together, without responsibility. People don’t come here to do something, they sit down without being tired, they drink without being thirsty."
Emmanuel Levinas (1906 - 1995), French intellectual whose influential moral philosophy was based on the concept of the epiphany of the face-to-face encounter with another.

The early evening sunlight is like gold dust, motes of bien-etre (almost tangible) drifting in the air.

It’s time to wander towards dinner.

My favorite dinner in Paris

Pate de campagne
Salad parmentiere (potatoes,
vinaigrette, herbs and seasonings)
Haricots verts
Assiette de fromages
Vanilla flan

James had:
Mussels in a cream sauce
Warm salad with goat cheese
Grilled salmon
Mushroom gratin
Assiette de fromages
Crème brulee
 

Our waitress is young, crisp, serious, and red-headed. She’s brought her dog to work with her, a cute wire-haired mutt with one ear that goes up and one ear that flops down. She settles the dog behind the bar before she ties her apron around her waist and comes to take our order.

“What’s you dog’s name?” I ask. The waitress sizes me up: dog lover, or pain-in-the-ass Board of Health type American?

“Le chien, c'est mignon,” I assure her.

“Effie,” the girl told me. And we both turned to look at Effie, peeking her head out from behind the bar, one ear up and one ear flopping down.
I told James to leave a big tip.

And then we went for a moonlight walk along the Seine.

Evening is its own Empire in Paris.

And then we found ourselves on the Pont des Arts:

They moved like spirits, those dancers on the Pont des Arts.

Strictly speaking, the bridge is for pedestrians only, a walk way that crosses the river from the Louvre to the French Academy. Waltzing is allowed though – especially on a fine end-of-Summer night when the city’s citizens don’t want to go home, not yet, not when the air is the color of heaven.

It started with a small company of Parisians twirling around a pick-up band (a violin, a guitar, and an accordion) and ended as a celebration with all the picnic-ers and dreamers who crowd the railings of the Pont at this time of day. The sky is sapphire-blue, the Seine a ribbon of silver, and Les Immortels are looking down.

Did I say waltzing was “allowed”?

I meant “mandatory”.




And that was Paris. The next day we headed out of town, for La France Profond.

What follows are scenes from The Road -- excerpts from Chapters Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, and Eight.

Normandy:

Called "A Dream of Green", it is the last refuge of the European nightingale.

It tastes like Calvados and Camembert.

This is where we came to the end of the road, for now.

There is always a next time.

Because for wanderers like us, the road NEVER ends.