An Unreal Day
After arriving in Paris, my wife, daughter and I decided to consider the remainder
of that as not a real day, but a short faux day – our two week vacation would not begin until we had attempted to have a good night’s sleep. We arrived at our apartment around 1:00PM and figured if we managed to remain awake for six hours without faltering we would be in the clear.
When you are exhausted time moves incredibly slowly, thus it is best not to look at your watch. We ventured out into the neighborhood (rue du Temple) looking for lunch and ended up at a packed Middle Eastern restaurant. It had to be a good sign: the steak, chicken, and veal liver on beds of ratatouille were hearty, but the clock read only 2:45PM. Quoi faire?
Supplies for the fridge at local market around the corner: Brie de Meaux,
peaches, figs, a Bordeaux and a baguette. It was now 3:15PM.
“What?” said Andrea, “we will never last.”
“Have faith,” I reassured her and prepared to head off to the Place des Vosges.
We stopped at one of our favorite galleries, l’Archange, to catch up on one of our favorite artists we could not afford to buy, Tobia Rava, an Italian Jewish artist whose numbered paintings are based on the Kabbalah (www.tobiarava.com). Last year we bought an affiche and this year found a catalogue with descriptive essays in English.
Then the obligatory stop at Occitane for honey incense; Jody likes to have sweet smells in any apartment we rent.
Finally a meander through le Marais. It was close enough to dinner time that I was craving a corned beef sandwich from Goldenberg’s, but they were closed. A heaping mound of corned beef on Jewish Rye (I have always wondered what makes it particularly Jewish) is a luxury for me found only on rare trips to New York. The idea of eating the real thing is Paris seemed both ironic and sacrilegious.
We passed a newsstand and I bought an issue of Pariscope, an essential and bargain-priced weekly guide to cultural happenings in Paris, assuming you can read French:
the six page addendum in English no longer exists.
5:00PM, and Andrea says, “This is not a real day. I mean we are really not here if you know what I mean. Let’s start our vacation tomorrow.” I knew what she meant despite the fact that I did not allow myself to feel tired from our travels.
Back at the apartment we ate our light dinner of Brie de Meaux, peaches, a baguette and a bottle of wine. By 9PM I was asleep; I cannot attest for my companions. A mother and a daughter who live two thousand miles from one another are not soon parted, especially if it took them more than two thousand miles to bring them together.
©. Louis Borgenicht
