After a very long day of flying and several adventures in the Metro lugging a suitcase (note: always make sure the number you have in your head is the correct line before you drag your suitcase up and down numerous flights of stairs in a major Metro station) I am safely ensconced in the adorable garret studio that I will call home for the next several weeks.

I am so excited about the coming days -- exploring one of the world's greatest cities, attending Maison et Objet -- the preeminent interior design show in the world, and just being and living my life at a European pace.  Oh, and let's not forget the amazing cuisine and the wine!


For all you Francophiles out there, I highly recommend the collection of writings on Paris edited by Jennifer Lee called Paris in Mind.  I started reading some of the stories while on the plane and "Paris in Winter" by Irwin Shaw really stuck with me, for obvious reasons:

Paris in the winter is for connoisseurs of melancholy -- lovers soon to be parted, merchants on the edge of bankruptcy, poets caught between rhymes and remittance men caught between checks, horse owners whose steeds have come in last, playwrights who have just had a failure, women whose husbands have left them for younger, prettier, smarter, richer, and all-round better girls; ...Winter, like unhappiness is more biting in Paris than elsewhere.  The gayest of cities, it has the farthest to fall in its descent to sorrow.  The wittiest of cities, the more noticeable it is there when the joke is flat.  The most hospitable of cities, it is the loneliest when the doors are shut.  The most openly loving of cities, it is the coldest when the lovers are driven indoors.  Here it is impossible to overlook the unheroic fact that not enough people kiss in the rain or at five degrees below zero.

All this is true.  And then --
    And then the sun comes out.

Now I am going to lay down and try to go to sleep to the sounds of Paris at night, if only I could get the song "All This Beauty" by The Weepies out of my head....

à bientôt!