Gay Paree

I am very excited to be going to Paris and Amsterdam in November.

I studied in the South of France during college and traveled to Paris to get there. My recollection of my day in Paris was running into my first Parisian on the street - a haute couture type of guy. Svelt, well-dressed, and kind of smily when he realized I was a lost and displaced young American. I think he gave me directions.

Also, I remember being totally overwhelmed at the Louvre (despite having been to many big international museums and later in life working at the Guggenheim). There was just too much to see. I remember stopping for a beverage at the cafe inside the museum (probably an Orangina; I was a bit Orangina obsessed that summer) and people watching. And calling my mother from a payphone I could barely operate. But then, I've called my mother from various payphones, both sketchy and funky, at various locales at various points in my life (9/11 being a memorable one; I called her from a payphone down the hall in a roach infested efficiency weekly "hotel" I was living in in San Francisco...it will be weird not calling her anymore, but she's in my heart always).

Right after I left the Louvre, the new "chic" shoes I bought for the trip quickly disintegrating, leaving my feet actually BLEEDING. So my biggest memory of Paris is eschewing blood on its sidewalks. Good times.

More to come...