Here’s my favorite shot of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. My relationship with “P-a-h-r-e-e” is somewhat complicated. The above image is from one of my visits to Paris with Charlotte. I think we were there, at least in part, for Charlotte’s 40th birthday. As mentioned in yesterday’s post, I left the UK for Paris and spent much of my stay there walking to and from all the classic sites and scenes with my thick, orange “Let’s Go Europe” travel guide in hand. I don’t remember where I slept or, how I navigated the city. This was back in 1983, about a decade prior to GPS technology and some 15 years before the Internet started becoming a ubiquitous part of everyday life.

At some point, I must have gotten sick of the intensity of city life and via Gare du Sud, headed down to the south of France. I do recall taking a night train, the TGV to Marseille. When possible, night trains (and night ferries) were the preferred way to travel when on a Eurail pass, as it meant you could sleep on the train (or, on the deck of the ferry) and not have to pay for loggings.

Like many of the great cities of the world, Paris is layered and dotted with distinct neighborhoods of varying interest and allure. My favorite Parisian neighborhoods? Marais and St Germain.

Interestingly, my father met his second wife Margit in Paris sometime just after WWII. He was stationed there as a reporter for the US Army’s newspaper, Stars & Stripes and Margit was in Paris to attend a fashion school. According to what she told me several years before passing away, the two had met at Café de Flore on the corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain och Rue Saint-Benoît.

In the early days of 2003, my relationship with Paris become fraught with tragedy. In an act of desperation and abysmal sadness, my brother Tyko took his life at a hotel near Arc de Triomphe. Of all the places I’d like to return to, Paris is fairly low on my list. Morbid as it may sound, I may one day return to Paris and visit the hotel where my brother’s life ended.