Not Quite Springtime In Paris

Spring arrives so early in Northern California, with tulip trees and other flowering trees blooming on Valentine's Day, that there's a seasonal dysphoria when traveling to colder climes. Driving in from the airport yesterday I saw a few blossoming trees and grassy fields of daffodils, but none of the leafy green trees I left at home.  It looks as though for me there will be two springs this year.

Yes, although the flight was delayed a half hour in Salt Lake City for plane de-icing, we did not fall out of the sky and I am now an official resident of Paris, at least for the next 29 days.  The city remains as beautiful in real life as it does in my memory, and my pied-a-terre on Rue de  Poissy is quite up to snuff; in fact, much better than the snuff I expected.

I'm really irritated at my parents for passing along the genes for robust thighs and bad knees without the compensation of map-reading skills.  Had I possessed the slightest ability to follow those squiggles, or at least a little common sense, today's foray to the grocery store would have taken 30 minutes, instead of the three and a half hour unplanned sightseeing tour I enjoyed.  I figured out (after the fact, of course) that like a one-legged chicken I kept turning left and so ended up making a giant circle, for which my bones are now punishing me.

Actually, it wasn't all my fault.  I kept looking for street signs to follow my Google directions, but it took three of those hours to figure out the signs are ON the buildings, not on a signpost in front of them. Also, the printed map I have doesn't show every street, which is just stupid in the Latin Quarter, where there is a new street every 50 feet.  I accidentally found both the Cluny Museum and the Sorbonne (neither of which was on my agenda today), and would be stuck in that loop still had a handsome gentleman not shown mercy and pointed me in the right direction.

I should have listened to wise advice and bought a GPS device -- although judging from the error messages I've gotten on my rented cell phone, I probably couldn't have used the GPS, either.

After the compulsively casual (translation: sloppy and slutty) look of many women in my part of California, the style of Parisians is stunning.  Even old grannies with their beat-up shopping carts are well dressed, and a cloud of expensive perfume floats behind each long-legged, black-booted, fast-walking mademoiselle. Everyone looks so, so, so... French!

And those months of French lessons?  HA!  I listen and speak in barely 33-1/3 speed while all of France is in warp 78, although it is a little gratifying that I can understand the TV-for-toddlers. Shopping for food and other necessities was an adventure without a complete vocabulary, and prices are very high.  It would have been worth an extra suitcase to bring along the Charmin.

I'm not complaining -- after the last weeks of doubting my sanity in planning this trip, it's lovely to know this trip wasn't yet another example of, "what the hell were you thinking, Cyn?"  Paris is wonderful, at least on this first day, and I'm glad I followed through on my dream to spend (cue the music) April in Paris.

Tomorrow takes me (by taxi or Metro) to Notre Dame for Easter Vigil.   May your basket be filled with litters of Easter Peeps!  Alleluia!