I think Paris is getting to me

The Rhine was running high, Florence was florid with wine-flushed cheeks and well-trod streets, and the Alps were calm as only stone can be. Last night 24 of us, from 21 days of this, said goodbye. My first tour of the season is finished, and today is getting underway with a salmon crepe to make French coffee go down, and something Parisian seems to be seeping into me. Or maybe it’s just three weeks of sleep deprivation.

 

But sitting here in my wicker chair, a table lopsided just right, a fromagerie across the street and a nascent Francophile rhythm in every beat of my heart I am set to restart, a week until the tour that ends at my favorite jour when the doors of Athens will open and love and I will reach out for each other again.

 

Damn right I love my job. And perhaps my peers, with their longer careers, would find me a foolish young man. But today I’m excited, for a love well requited, is marking this passage of time. And in a month we will reach, on that far Grecian beach, the vacation we both will have earned.

 

I’m halfway through the work, and exhausted enough by the quirk of these numerable days, with their detail-filled haze, that I’m tempted to sleep for the week. But there’s much to prepare, in this fine Gallic air, for the people who are waiting for me.

 

Thirty of us, in a big black green bus, still have six countries to visit together. But when all that is through, I’ll take my me and her you, and climb into a plane for the east. And if all goes quite well, after this introvert’s hell, we’ll have fine times and delicate weather. But between now and then, while I play father hen, every day is an experience feast.

 

But first, I need to get out of Paris. I think this city is getting to me.