My Last Day in Paris (for now!)

Yesterday was my last full day in Paris before flying home this afternoon. So of course it had to begin as all last days of international travel must do at this moment: with a COVID test taken any time on the calendar day preceding the day of departure.

Fortunately this was very easy to accomplish here. The pharmacy that is just a block from my hotel sets up a little tent every day for walk-in tests with immediate results.

I was there right when the pharmacy opened at 9, but a short line was already forming. I submitted my identification, paid my 29 euros, had the swab up the nose, and came back in twenty minutes for my results. The document was entirely in French, but the only two things I needed to be able to read on it were my name and the crucial word "NEGATIF"!!! So hooray for that. 

The weather was cold, gray, and gloomy. "But you always say you like this kind of weather best," I reminded myself. Still, I planned an outing full of sparkle as compensation. I have walked everywhere on this trip, partly to avoid the (excellent) Paris Metro system for fear of crowds and also because my favorite part of a trip like this just is the walking. So I set off on an hour-long walk to a museum I had never visited before, the Jacquemart-Andre Museum, which, in the words of the ever-reliable Rick Steves guidebook, "showcases the lavish home of a wealthy art-loving Parisian couple" and their collection of European masters.

I crossed the Seine on the ornate, ostentatious Pont Alexandre III:

When I reached the museum, it was as lovely as I had been told it was. 

There was a Botticelli exhibit upstairs so I sighed in the presence of his beautiful Madonnas. But then I settled myself to write while sitting on the most appealing bench I'd found in any museum so far:

I would like to say that I wrote a poem worthy of the red velvet cushions, or found an idea for the book that will be my career-culminating masterpiece. But I felt a bit shy with its splendor and just wrote in my journal.

The museum's cafe is equally splendid, and I treated myself to lunch there, including selecting a delectable pastry from the dessert case. Most of the other patrons seemed to be French ladies having lunch with other French ladies; I was the only person without a companion, but I was happy to be an American lady having lunch with her journal.

My next stop was less satisfying. Boulevard Hausmann, where the museum is situated, is also the site of Paris's two grand department stores: Galeries Lafayette and Printemps. I had bought a brightly colored tropical plush toy bird there on a trip to Paris back when I was in my 20s, which I then had to lug in a shopping bag on the rest of the European tour. But this time I just found both stores overwhelming. They have now sprawled into adjacent buildings as well, and as I entered I saw so many signs for Prada, Gucci, and Chanel that I knew this was not the place for frumpy, dumpy, dowdy me. Here is the famous rotunda of Galeries Lafayette: 

I will confess that I had visions, when I planned this trip, of returning from Paris completely transformed. Maybe I would change my hair style from the same way I have worn my hair since high school! Maybe I would return chic and stylish, as Audrey Hepburn does in Sabrina. Before her trip to Paris, she is merely the chauffeur's daughter with a hopeless crush on the son of the manor. But upon her return, she is such a stunner that now he is the one smitten. When her father worries that she is still "reaching for the moon," she is able to tell him, "No, Papa. Now the moon is reaching for me."

Well, I slunk away from the Galeries Lafayette sadly sure that the moon will NOT be reaching for me. The only way this transformation could happen would be that I would have to want it much more than I do, spend much more money that I am willing to spend, and most important, have a stylish friend with infinite patience to take me on as a project. 

Oh, well. My true goal had been, not to transform my wardrobe, but to transform my writing. So on this last day of the trip it was time to ask myself: had I achieved that goal? I have to answer: not really. I wrote less than I had planned and mainly focused on children's book projects - what I've always written - instead of something daringly new-for-me. 

But the real goal of the trip hadn't been so much to change who I am as a writer but to recover who I have always been - someone who finds deep joy in the act of writing itself and in being part of a supportive community of other creators. 

And that I did, both as I sat writing in the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, the Centre Pompidou, and on a velvet bench in the Jacquemart-Andre, and as I spent three wonderful days with Catherine Stock in Rignac. 

I hereby declare this trip a SUCCESS! Now I just need to get home today despite various logistical challenges that are too boring to talk about. And really, there is no scenario I can imagine on which I don't get back home sooner or later.. and with renewed joy in my heart. 

Au revoir, Paris!