Our final month in Paris

Yesterday, Thursday was the first day of our final month in Paris, and an odd sensation is starting to hit home at last:

"So how long are you staying in Paris?"

"We'll be here until next spring"

"We'll be here until the end of next March"

"We'll be here for several months"

"We'll be here for a couple of months"

"We'll be here until next month"

"We're leaving this month."

Whoa! Frankly this has us a bit skittish. With increasing frequency I hear Susan say, in an offhand manner thrown out for no particular reason: "I really don't want to go." Of course I know exactly what she means. Absolutely. Totally.

Don't get us wrong: we have no illusions about being Parisian or French or Italian or Danish or whatever; hey we're American and that's that. But we do love the pace of life here, the rhythm of living in Europe. We love not needing a car. We love the focus on good food and wine as a cornerstone of civilization. We love the sense of place here. And when I say here I don't mean just in Paris, but this tiny corner of the planet. (OK maybe I mean Siena. Maybe. It's possible.)

The way we see it is that come the end of March we will be moving abroad for the next leg of our very personal, sometimes curious and always enlightening odyssey.

To paraphrase the old Jimmy Durante song, "We really wanna stay but we really gotta go."

Wish you were here,

Steve

(photo above: Message board outside the Tang Freres store on Avenue d'Ivry, "Chinatown.")