Literary Paris

My friend Sarah arrived for a visit! She is my friend Sandy’s daughter—Sandy and I have been friends since the fifth grade. Sarah is a beautiful poet from Los Angeles who has a smile like Cameron Diaz. I have promised Sandy we will not get into trouble.

Here is something I adore about e-husband (and boyfriend). He loves Sandy and Sarah. He was very excited about Sarah coming to Paris and he gave me ideas about what we might want to do: I bet Sarah would like Versailles Do you think Sarah would want to go on a walking tour? You’ve got to love a man who looks out for your friends.

So I thought e-husband (and b.f.) had a splendid idea—we would go on a literary walking tour on the Left Bank. Sarah and I allow 45 minutes to get there which seems like ample time. On this beautiful Paris morning, we walk along the Seine to the Left Bank, follow the map to find the Classic Walking tours gathering place Metro Stop Cardinale Lemoine.

In Paris, it is sometimes hard to gauge how long it will take you to walk to your destination. Some things look very close on a map but take longer than you think to walk there. We have walked thirty minutes and we are still pretty far from the metro stop. We pick up our pace—practically jogging. My daughter complains that during her childhood she suffered because I am such a fast walker and sometimes I’m oblivious to the pace of others. But Sarah is right there along side of me. Finally when we reached a maze of side streets, I ask a man on the street for directions to the Metro stop “C’est la!” he says pointing.

Sure enough, he gave us directions to the Metro stop but it is the wrong metro stop. The tour starts in five minutes but we will not give up! We retrace our steps, ask another woman for directions and arrive at the tour precisely at 10:30 (sweating, panting, but on time.)

The tour is “A Moveable Feast Tour” taking us to Hemingway’s Paris haunts—we see his studio, his home, the Mouffetard area where he lived. We also see where James Joyce lived, and we learned about their lives in Paris in the 20s.

We are happy we made it to the tour—it would have been disappointing to miss it. Afterwards we walk to the Luxembourg Gardens that Hemingway loved and watch the children playing with their little boats in the lake.