Paris

In my last post, I referenced Sammuel Johnson who said that when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. True, I was not ready to leave London after spending just four days there, but our next stop was Paris, a city I had also always wanted to visit.

G.K. Chesterton suggested, “London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.” Yet, when I think back to the elderly Parisian waiter who winced after I followed my “Bonjour” with “Uh, can I please have a hamburger?” my lack of command of the high school French I once took seems more puzzling to me. A comedian I went to see once commented that if he needed help or were being mugged in France, he would only be able to shout colors and numbers at his attacker: “Deux! Bleu!” I wondered if it would come to that.

This…