Looking over my website, you might ask “What’s the obsession with Paris? Never mind that I also have a minor obsession with gargoyles. I’ll save that for another blog post.
If you’ve ever been to Paris, you probably know why I decided to write a series of stories about the place. It is beautiful, sometimes exasperating. The waiter tossing a cup onto the wrought iron table in Part III of “Paris Diaries” comes from real experience. In the waiter’s defense, my beloved husband likes to puree French and the Spanish he’s fluent in into a completely new language and use it liberally.
In addition to the bustling life of the city, I find two of its cemeteries the most interesting I’ve ever visited: Père Lachaise and the Cimetière du Montparnasse. The lattter is where Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre lie side-by-side in repose. In the Cimetière du Montparnasse, my Sprench-speaking spouse was surprised to come upon the grave of a notable person from the Dominican Republic where he once lived. And even though other cemeteries I’ve visited have more interesting structures–the cemetery in Santiago, Chile immediately comes to mind–no other I’ve been to has housed so many notable as well.
I love the museums, especially the Musée D’Orsay. My new favorite in the museum category is the Quai Branly, not only because I like the exhibits from many cultures, but it has a river of words at its entrance and a fantastic vertical garden on the side.
I love writing about Paris so much that there’s always the possibility that I will continue the saga of Madolyn. Perhaps she returns to her auditing job but for a different restaurant chain after a hostile takeover while she was abroad. Maybe she pays off her debts and moves back to Paris to help establish the city’s first TGI Friday’s. I see possibilities in a story of a trip to the cemetery, an odd encounter with someone who tends the vertical garden, or an unfortunate career move when Bridget becomes one of those people who wanders the paths of the Tuilleries Gardens looking for unsuspecting tourists and tries to convince them that they’ve’ve dropped a valuable ring.