City of Lights

This will be my last post while in Paris.  I'm planning on wrapping up the blog with a few more posts once I return home, posts featuring life lessons from this program and such.

Things have been winding down since I returned to Paris from Normandy.  Although it was tempting to cram as many last-minute adventures into my final two days before the flight home, I decided to take it a bit easier, save ample time for packing, and generally collect myself before traveling 24 solid hours.

So yesterday I slept in until nine, began preliminary sorting and packing, and eventually joined Kierstin and Caleb for brunch at a crêperie down the street.  My ham, egg, and cheese crêpe was delicious.  In the past I've only eaten crêpes from street vendors, and while those were certainly tasty it was nice to have a plate and utensils as well.  The crêpe itself was thinner and crispier and butter-soaked, so that I felt like I was eating a typical American pancake breakfast where the pancake happened to be the plate.  And my hot chocolate was yummy.

Then we made our way to the heart of Paris and located the Centre Pompidou, the modern art musuem.  I accidentally left my camera in the room, so any interested reader will need to search Google Images for pictures of the building and its contents.  It's a strange building with the steel frame on the outside and staircases running up the outer walls like hamster tubes.  And it contains strange art.  I liked the Cubists much more than I would have expected, and about half of Derain's work is quite good, in my opinion.  We can gloss over the other exhibits.

I'm glad I went, but by 4:00 or so I was also glad to leave.  One installation in particular was designed to hack visual processing in a fascinating way, with thin rods suspended over a striped background that seemed to move, appear, and vanish with the movement of my head.  I'm afraid I was a bit too fascinated and wound up giving myself a touch of motion sickness.  So it was nice to get back to the room and rest a bit.

The rest of the evening was devoted to packing.  The heaviest things and most fragile things went carefully into my new souvenir bag, and the rest are fitted into my suitcase like a Tetris block arrangement.

After a slow beginning to this morning, Kierstin and I went to St. Sulpice and bought a few last macaroons from Pierre Herme.  We wandered a bit and found St-Germain-des-Pres, a church I'd been wanting to visit for a while.  Then we walked to the Notre Dame area and visited the flower market once more before finding Caleb and Mir in the line for the Sainte-Chapelle.  After visiting with them for a few minutes, I struck out on my own and just walked along the Seine.

It was a bittersweet walk.  The air was cool, the day almost fall-like, the river lapping, the city so characteristic...it's difficult to leave behind.  I did accomplish a goal that had fallen by the wayside, at least:  I ate truffles in Paris, inspired by Caroline Stevermer and a novel I borrowed from Miriam years ago in middle school.  They were praline truffles and I ate them as I sat on the edge of the Seine on Ile-de-la-Cite.  There's another (admittedly relatively minor) life goal fulfilled.

My wanderings brought me to Concorde, eventually, and then I turned and walked home to the Armenian House.  It was a long walk, one that I'd never completed in its entirety before, but I was proud of myself for managing it and pleased to have a chance to savor Paris once more this summer.  I followed the M1 and RER B lines back, using the maps posted outside the stations when necessary: Concorde, Tuileries, the Louvre, St. Michel and Notre Dame, Luxembourg, Port Royal, Denfert-Rochereau and finally Cite Universitaire.  Ah Paris.  Attends-moi, Paris, ne m'oublies pas.  Je ne t'oublierai jamais.

I returned in time for the final baguette picnic of the summer, attended by everyone who needed to finish up jars of peanut butter or packs of yogurt - that is to say, attended by (almost) everyone.  We had a feast.  And then - we drifted away in ones and two, accompanied by hugs and farewells and sorrow.  Mir, Caleb, Kierstin, Margaret and I walked in Montsouris Park across the street until the park closed with the sunset, and there were more partings.

And here I am in my room, ready to sleep and head out at 6:30 am tomorrow morning.  I'm very much looking forward to seeing my family and my home, but it's difficult to leave the people and the city I've gotten to know over the past two months.  It's not the end.  We will find each other again, whether by accident or design, in months or years, at a conference or on a road trip or maybe even in Paris.  Because we are all coming back to Paris someday, somehow...and there will be the Seine, the Louvre, the streetfronts all of cream, the baguettes and the macaroons, the Impressionists, the Tuileries, the flower market and the buzz of the train doors closing, the vast roundabout with the Arc de Triomph towering above, the Eiffel Tower and the Boulevard Jourdan, and maybe even still that boulangerie down the street with such erratic hours.

There's a Roman amphitheater in the heart of Paris - this city endures.  Centuries pass and empires rise and fall, and this city endures.  It changes, it grows, bits of it fall by the wayside as others come into existence, but the city remains.   So endure a bit longer, Paris, until I find my way back to you.

City of Lights and my comrades-in-adventure: I won't say goodbye, but until we meet again.  Mes amis, au revoir.