Kelly's Birthday Trip

The Lizard King

There's a photograph of Chris I wish I could share with you right now. It's the photo he sent to me after we met and had our summer fling back when dinosaurs walked the earth.  He left New York for Germany, we exchanged letters, and photos and eventually....well...you know what happens.  It was a good photo.

In the picture he has on a football jacket, you know the kind?  With wool center panels and white leather arms.  I think it was a Detroit Lions jacket, which makes no sense on a Long Island army boy living in Germany, but doesn't need to.  It screamed youth and virility.

He's wearing a baseball cap, brim curved as if he'd been carrying it around in his back pocket.  There's a lock of thick black hair escaping out the front.  His cheekbones are high and sharp enough to cut glass with. And those damned eyes.  Big, blue and sparkling; eyelashes so long and thick you'd swear he's wearing mascara. You can just tell those eyes are going to get you into trouble of the best kind.

On the back was written  me at Jim Morrison's grave / Paris

And that phrase carried more weight than all the sparkling eyes on earth.  Those words meant worlds to the young music-loving, pot-head, rocker-chick, hair-bag girl that I was.  Jim Morrison!  Grave!  Paris!

Months later, after the eyes had done all the hard work and we'd been dating for a while, I heard the story of Jim Morrison's grave. If you know my husband at all you won't be surprised when I say I've heard it many times since and each time it's a little different. But the essence remains the same, and it's a good story.  Not a narrative so much as a tableau.

Père Lachaise cemetery - historic and beautiful, filled with elegant mausoleums.  Paris's boldest and brightest have been buried here for centuries.  Artists, poets and composers lie in repose amid stone sculpture and statuary elegant enough to made you weep.

And 28 year old Jim Morrison rests among them, in a grave donated by an adoring fan after an overdose in the city of lights back in the year of my birth (about the time of the primordial sludge if you're building a time-line.) Visiting the cemetery as a young man, Chris found hippies, rockers, stoners and would-be poets treating it as a pilgrimage site.

Arrows and signs saying "this way to Jim" had been spray painted on paths, benches and even tombs.  The grave itself was a scene of such adoration and debauchery as to boggle the mind.  People were turning on, tuning in and dropping out.  Barefoot and dirty twenty-somethings strummed guitars. Dreadlocked sleepy-eyed youngsters making out amid sleeping bags, bongs and bongos. A grizzled hippie took swigs on a bottle of whiskey, then poured matching shots into the grave's soil. "One for me, and one for you, Jim."  Cigarettes and joints left lit and smoking as a token of love, and plenty more being toked among the living. Used needles and condoms.  In one version of the story a guy even dies of an overdose.  RIGHT THERE.

The misguided mourning of a dead-before-his-time artist turned into a 20th century bacchanalia. 

Needlessly destructive?  Yes.  Horrifyingly disrespectful of a Paris icon?  Yes.  

Screaming of sex, drugs & rock n roll?  Abso-friggin-lutely.  

I envied Chris the experience of witnessing bohemianism at its best and worst, in Paris.

According to Time-Out Paris, today Morrison's grave is the third most visited site in Paris, behind only the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre.  I found this both intriguing and unbelievable.  Regardless, curiosity would have drawn me there sooner or later and on our most recent trip to Paris we decided to check it out.  And while I would never condone spray painting a headstone to give directions, I was kinda hoping to find at least a slice of the depraved flower child vibe Chris's stories evoked.

I did not.  It was all tour groups and barricades.  The grave itself feels like an afterthought squeezed onto a patch of ground at an awkward angle, draped in tawdry plastic flowers.

It had a decidedly UN rock n roll vibe.  There was one very somber beatnik-y girl looking deep and forlorn; I held out hope she'd have a breakdown, recite some poetry or at least light a joint.  But she just sat at the base of the graffitti'd tree and stared intensely at the grave for a long time, leaving only as the next noisy tour group arrived.

Still, I can't say I was disappointed. The tree provided plenty of entertaining reading, for one thing. The cemetery itself is breathtaking and it did kinda feel like hallowed ground. Yeah, Jim Morrison is buried there, but so are Chopin, Edith Piaf and Proust. The final resting place of Oscar Wilde and Marcel Marceau among countless others.  


Visiting Père Lachaise felt a bit like we were paying them all tribute.  


And now I'm going to pour myself a whiskey, maybe one for Jim as well, and then hunt around for that photo of Chris.  G'night.

k.

Quarante à Paris - Part Deux

Paris for my birthday weekend, thanks to a lovely husband who excels at 'The Grand Romantic Gesture.'

Aren't they both terribly handsome? 

What I like about Paris is, you can be walking around and think to yourself, "I know I've been in Notre Dame before, but I really can't remember what it looks like."

And then you can just pop in for like five minutes, remind yourself of its Gothic glory, take a few artsy shots...

...and then manipulate those shots on your iPhone while sitting in dappled sunlight at a nearby cafe drinking a lovely coffee.  And when the waiter asks a question in French and the only words you catch are "password" and "WEEFEE" - say yes. Better yet, say oui.  Because in Paris, Wi-Fi is pronounced WEEFEE.  Which is another reason I love Paris.  WEEFEE is much more fun to say than Wi-Fi.  Right?  Say if with me a few times ... WEEFEE ... WEEFEE ...WEEFEE!!

So you sip and manipulate and WEEFEE while also watching Parisian life stroll by in this little square.  And these guys are sitting in front of you in their slim suits, smoking endless cigarettes and knocking back espressos, speaking rapid and unintelligible French, just looking and sounding incredibly GALLIC which charms you to no end because you are a bit of a Francophile.  They couldn't be more French if they were wearing berets, eating garlicky snails and marching around with baguettes under their arms.  There is nothing extraordinary about them, but they are woven into the fabric of this tableau that you are enjoying with your cafe au lait, and you love them for that.

And you know the Seine is just a few blocks away, spanned by an amazing array of bridges, one of which you recently crossed because you were wandering inside Notre Dame a short while ago.  Bridges running the gamut from gilded over-the-top grandeur to simply functional, and each one captures your imagination for a different reason.  As does almost everything else in Paris. Don't you just love a river running through the middle of a city?

And Paris excels at making the Seine personable and approachable - which is another thing to love about her.

But I guess you get the point.  I love Paris and will never stop finding reasons to do so, nor do I want to.  Maybe I should tell you a little bit more about our trip?
 

Let's start with our bff's for the weekend, Matt & Elodie.  Maybe you remember them from Bangladesh? Anyway, they drove up from Lyons to help us celebrate.  Wasn't that sweet?  And aren't they adorable?

Chris and I tried to match their adorableness - but I'm not sure we made it.  They set the bar pretty high, these kids.  We started at Le Fumoir, a restaurant near the Louvre, for drinks and nibbles.

We met friends, we strolled, we saw cool doors.

We enjoyed the Paris vibe in Passage Molière, a charming, quiet little alley somewhere between the 1st and 3rd arrondissements.  Home to The House of Poetry, a few shops and a marvelous place to sit, 

enjoy wine, 

take more artsy photos, 

enjoy more wine, 

gorge nibble on meats and stinky cheeses 

and make fun of Matt's choice of footwear. 

There was also dancing at a West African bar, an Irish pub, some metro rides, a torturous late night taxi search as well as a fruitless quest for still more food. But to be honest both the photos and my memories get a little blurry after the footwear so that's the image I'll leave you with. A long day, a late night, new friends, a lot of fun and we still have two more full days to enjoy in Paris. So stay tuned, we still have dead rock stars to meet.

-k.

Quarante à Paris

Who's got the best husband in the world?  Moi!  That's who.

My husband Christian, a man of many fine qualities, has never been known as a good keeper of surprises.  For example, at 11am on December 13th, 1994, he purchased a ring with the intention of proposing to me twelve days later, on Christmas morning.  By 9pm on the night of December 13th we were engaged.  Come to think of it, in twenty years, we have not once woken up on Christmas morning to an unwrapped present under the tree.

Once we made it to December 24th, but that was a fluke.

So the man gets big props for planning and executing a birthday trip that remained a surprise until the moment of departure, when the lady at the airport check-in desk asked "What's your destination today?" and he answered "Paris."  At which point there was much jumping up and down and joyful squealing on my part.

For weeks he's been leaving fake leads and false clues.  Notes saying "cancel donkey ride" and "book balloon trip" casually left on the table.  Learn to Speak Spanish books lying around.  Computer screens have been left open to "Grand Canyon Tour"  and "Bahamian Cruise Line" pages.  Each day he asked me if the Nevada tourism board had returned his call or if we'd gotten anything from Costa Rican Jungle Tours in the mail.

He nearly broke one Saturday afternoon over Mexican food and margaritas, "Tell me now if you know because I am dying to talk about it."  But keep the secret he did and I have to say I enjoyed the buildup almost as much as the surprise itself.  And his patience paid off - I had no time to fret about travel plans and was walking on cloud nine the whole weekend.  We're still operating under the "he can do no wrong" policy.

But enough about him...let's talk about Paris!!

Chris and I usually travel as cheaply as possible, which includes staying at hostels.  But when you turn 40 you deserve a little something special.

Which meant this charming boutique hotel.  The tony Hôtel L'Addresse.  Ooh la la!  Our room was a chocolaty little gem on the top floor, known as the Chocolate Satin Room.  Sigh.

Small by some standards, spacious by Paris's.  And look!  Luxe bathrobes on the bed! And a window we could fling open wide to look out over rooftops!  And what else could we see out that window?

The Eiffel Tower!  Sure, just the tip, but with something so beautiful, the tip is enough.

Especially when you could see the tip all lit up and sparkling every hour.  Hôtel L'Addresse is in Paris's swanky 17th arrondissement (or district) just down the street from....

The Arc de Triomphe!  BAM!  Just like that, within minutes of arriving at our home for the weekend, we've seen and mentally hugged two of Paris's icons.  Let's get moving!

The 17th (and neighboring 8th with its Champs Elysee) arrondissements are lovely, genteel neighborhoods for strolling.

And even nicer, there was a Metro stop just around the corner, on a main line, for easy access to the rest of the city.  Much like New York, Paris is a city that never runs out of faces and personalities to show you. So stay tuned for Quarante a Paris - Part Deux in which our heroine meets an international man of mystery, a smart French woman with a big heart, three tipsy Musketeers and a dead rock star.

-k.

M, M & K do P

Good evening ladies and gents, you're tuned in to the third and final installment of M&M come to Europe in which our heroines travel to Paris, France to sample the cheese, drink lemony beer (panaché en Francais) and wander the streets. Regular readers may recall that the girls traveled from Austria to Switzerland and now are rounding out their ten day tour in Paris....

Our arrival coincided with Bastille Day (observe le tricolore flying everywhere) and also with a massive rainstorm. But after seven days of walking, hiking, eating, drinking & playing with children in the heat, we were happy for a chance to take it easy.
We ate our first meal (and drank our first wine and panachés) at a brasserie just around the corner from our charming little hotel in the Marais neighborhood. I had to share my salad with Mademoiselle Ladybug but I didn't mind. She was very gracious and said "Merci beaucoup."


Then the day cleared up nicely, just in time for a late afternoon cruise down the Seine...

...and a stroll past some of Paris's sites. Three European capitals in ten days equals a lot of ground to cover. We three agreed before we even reached Paris that we couldn't see all the city has to offer so we wouldn't kill ourselves trying. It made for loosely planned days, a relaxed attitude and possibly getting lost once or twice (oops!!)

But don't think that means we just lazed away each day eating cheese in cafés (though there was plenty of that.) We also conquered The Metro.

Admired Miss Eiffel in the daylight, and as she sparkled at night.

I think all ladies sparkle in the Paris moonlight.

We also indulged in a little nostalgia and retraced some of Moira's steps from her last trip to Paris with her parents (our aunt & uncle) about twenty years ago. It made us all feel a little bit closer to two people we love and miss. Warm fuzzies - Parisian style.

And speaking of warm fuzzies, Monsieur Le Chat said bon jour to us while we wandered in Saint-Germain-des-Pres.

We spent a few hours wandering Montmartre, here are the girls in front of Sacré Coeur.

When you stroll around Paris at night, you see she really earns her nickname The City of Light.

Day or night, she's a pretty city (who apparently inspires me to try and be Ansel Adams with my little point & shoot Canon on sepia setting.)

But the best photographer of the trip was the waitress at dinner on our last night. Aren't we lovely?

And that, my dear people, ends the saga of M,M & K in Europe. It was an amazing ten days spent showing off some of my favorite places to some of my favorite people. We were downright pooped by the end and ready to go home for some wine-free downtime. Which I think is a sign of a well-planned and well-executed holiday. An even better sign? After a few days rest we all three agreed (via email) that we were good and rested up and ready for another ten days. I wish!!

I love you M & M, thanks for the good times.

-k.

An open letter to European cities

Dear City,

I know you have been wondering what it will take to grab hold of my heart and imagination. You want to know how to make me love you. I understand I must seem like a fickle mistress. Visiting some of you repeatedly while passing others by.

Rest easy, I have a lot of love to give. While there's no road map to winning my affection, you might take a page from Toulouse's book, the last city to incite my admiration.

A pretty bridge here, an arcaded square there...I'm not hard to please.

Lighting is always important to a lady.

If you look good at night, chances are I'll look good at night. That's endearing.

Old, medievally looking buildings go a long way.


Cobblestones, cathedrals, a river, a preponderance of sidewalk cafes...throw in a few gardens and I'm hooked. Gardens that have interest even in winter? Captivating.

A tiny little parade, complete with tiny marching band and nonsensical outfits can be very appealing.



The less obvious the reason for the parade, the better. The more outlandish the costumes, the more engaging I will find you.

City, I like you because you are folksy, quirky and true to your roots.

I can imagine your local weirdos parading through this very same square four hundred years ago, in outfits very like the ones I see today, celebrating the arrival of the salt ship from Jabuti or the victory of Aldéric, the city tortoise, in the king's market day tournament. I see it and I like what I see. Speaking of which...

Showing me my first game of rugby was a stroke of genius. Well done, Toulouse.


Seriously, live Rugby is like soft-core porn for women. Have you seen the size of these guys? Thighs the size of tree trunks. And the way they man-handle each other? I'm not sure that exact experience can be repeated, but City, do you have a rugby team? If not, you must have other sports I've yet to witness live. Boules? Cricket? Not sure how they'll stack up but I am willing to try.

It helps if you recruit a friend. In Toulouse's case it was a matter of happenstance. Suzanne has a brother. Brother used to work in Toulouse. Brother opened pub in Toulouse. Suzanne visited said brother several times. Suzanne likes Toulouse. Suzanne lives west and I live east, Toulouse is roughly in the middle. Suzanne's job flies her all over the place, including home to Dublin for the weekend. Suzanne's job will fly her to other locations for the weekend if she so chooses.

Should Suze choose Toulouse I'd be rude to refuse.
"Toulouse!" she enthused.
"Toulouse." I mused.
To shake the Vienna blues, I had nothing to lose,
with booze on the menu, I had no excuse.
And that's how Toulouse got the chance to seduce.

City, I realize this is a convoluted chain of events to follow, much less replicate, but do try. Because I am never so likely to visit a place as I am when someone I know is there.

All of the above are simply suggestions, but the next item is make or break. City, you simply MUST have a good pub. And here is where Toulouse really excelled, how it charmed and disarmed me. I present to you The Melting Pot. (City, are you taking notes?) Large enough to be lively, small enough to be cozy. There was a good crowd and a good buzz about the place all weekend. It helped that Suzanne's brother is The Man at this place, it made her bit of a celebrity (well, that and the fact that she is young, blond and gorgeous.)

Many thanks to Brother D. for the special treatment. The bartenders were chatty and funny, making us feel warm and welcome. Effortless professionals. We had a chance to rub elbows with a few ex-pat regulars as well; good, fun, lovely folks. Just really good fun all around. Even got invited back the next day for a table quiz.

I'd love to share some photos of us with our new pub friends, but...
A) the late hour + varying levels of inebriation + not really knowing them...feels somehow wrong to post them, and (more importantly)
B) Suze and I don't really look that good in any of the pub photos.

City, a good pub will earn you my devotion. Had Toulouse been found wanting on any other front, The Melting Pot did the trick and won me over. So much so that I've been looking more closely at my pubs in Vienna, trying to identify which one has a similar vibe and will hence become my new local.

And so City, those are just a handful of ideas to help you towards your goal of having that certain something, that je ne sais quoi, that will win me over and have me singing your praises. Keep dreaming, I may one day be yours.

-k.

p.s. Did I mention our hotel was directly above the pub? Fortuitous placement.