Paris the first time - May '94

Paris was the destination of yet another last minute courier flight I had purchased a day or two before departure. Although I had been to Avignon, this was my first time traveling without the benefit of bilingual speakers to guide me. I somehow managed to reserve a room on the Left Bank by telephone and fax with an old man who spoke broken English.

When I arrived at the place on Rue de l’Abbe de l’Eppe, a very elderly but spirited matron greeted me and began to rapidly question me in French. When she realized I didn’t understand her first question, she launched into another, and then another, in vain. I stood there like a deer in headlights, only able to muster “…uh” while she spouted out several exasperated “ooh, la, la!”s. Finally someone passing by translated. My room was not vacant yet, and I was to return in a couple hours.

It was a modest studio with a washbasin in the room, but shared bathroom. No television and just one lamp for reading. Simple but charmingly romantic for what one would expect from the Left Bank. It was six flights up on the top floor, with a small picture window that offered a view of the nearby Pantheon’s dome.

I loved wandering the Left Bank, browsing the music stands and bookstores and eating baguette sandwiches, romanticizing Paris enough to even buy a stamped copy of “A Moveable Feast” from Shakespeare and Co. bookstore. (a bit cliché but it I didn’t care.)

But after several days of climbing the stairs to my room with no a.c., I decided to try out the other side of Parisian life. Splurging, I booked myself into a more upscale hotel on the Right Bank, with elevator, a.c., television and a view of the Eiffel Tower.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had gone to Paris not knowing anyone there, but ran into several women at different times. It seems the McKarma was in full effect.

At the top of the Georges Pompidou Center I ran into Tory Jones, a production designer from New York who was visiting Paris alone. We hit some bars and drank the fennel-flavored absinthe while Frenchmen eyed my companion not so discretely. When joining Tory for dinner with some of her local friends in the Bastille neighborhood, I spotted my RISD classmate Karen Park, dining across the room. We both did a double take and then I went over to greet her. We arranged to meet up at Les Deux Magots the next day for a beer. My social life was suddenly busier than back in New York.

Karen, an apparel designer, lived in Paris and had married one of my artistic heroes, Jean-Paul Goude, a renowned art director who is practically a national hero in France and with whom many want to associate. When I went out to dinner with Karen and her visiting brother, she mentioned how she and her husband had dined with David Lynch and Isabella Rosellini the night before.

After dinner Karen sent her brother and I off to a club where she had put us on a list - Les Bains, a model-ly nightclub which was indeed filled with stickwomen bearing vacant stares.

Later in the week, while sketching in the wide courtyard of the Louvre, I recognized another attractive RISD grad named Christina who had been on the road traveling for seven months. France was her last stop before joining her boyfriend back home. (damn!) So I had yet another platonic woman friend to hit the town with. One evening we tried to get standing-room only tickets to the opera, but after finding it sold out we hopped on the Metro to an outer arrondissment for an English-language screening of the Irish film , "The Snapper".

It was a great intro to Paris, but I made a mental note not to return again without a girlfriend or at least someone who was available (stay-tuned for future postings to see how that panned out.)

Switzerland to Avignon to Venice, August '93

After about 5 days in Switzerland, I piled into a small double engine plane with Sibylle's family to fly to their summer place in Avignon, France. With her father, Mr. Thomke, at the controls, I was given the honorary co-pilot seat. As depicted in the top image we passed directly over the Alps. When we got close to Mont Blanc, Mr. Thomke dipped the controls and the plane took a sudden diving arc down toward the mountain. As our stomachs rose against the g-forces, his normally stoic face broke out into a big child-like grin. The little black specs on the Mount's white face turn into climbers who waved to us. Sibylle later told me he never did that for anyone else.

I was a bit star-struck staying at their beautiful home in Avignon, since this was during a period when I was in love with the French film "Jean de Florette" (still one of my favorites), which was shot in the region.

After a few days getting very pink in the Mediterranean sun , I jumped on an overnight train to Venice. I remember feeling a bit proud of myself at Avignon's central station when a young Frenchman approached me, asking for directions in French. I got to bust out my only French at the time: "Je ne parles pas le francais", and was feeling rather smug at not being mistaken for a tourist.

Paris - May 8th,1994 - Book 1

My first post is one of my favorite spreads in all of my sketchbooks. During this time I was getting hooked on courier flights to Europe. Basically I would call a courier agency and find out about greatly discounted flights going out in the next couple days. In return for traveling very last minute (usually a day's notice) and with only carry-on, you could get a flight to Europe for maybe $99 round-trip for a week or two. You would be surrendering your luggage space for business correspondence, which required someone to physically fill a seat. I visited several countries by myself this way.

The sketch is of Sainte Chapelle from the 13th Century, near Notre Dame, I believe. The photo I took at the Jardin des Tuileries. The sailboat, the blue skies, the ladybug backpack, and the laidback attitude of the mother and child really encapulated the pleasant tone of the week.

This was my first trip to Paris, alone. It was the first gorgeous sunny week of the year, so I experienced none of the surliness directed towards tourists I kept hearing about. All the French waiters were very friendly. But then I wasn't wearing white sneakers and a fanny pack either.
The week I was there, although traveling alone, I bumped into women I knew on three different occasions: two people from RISD and one commercial producer from New York. The karma was in full effect on this trip. I pretty much had something to do or some place to go in the company of an attractive woman the whole week. Ooh, la, la.