Buon Anno to everyone!

I feel to be in a time warp, presenting my three days in Paris nearly ten days after the fact, the holidays and Italy still entirely undocumented. It's difficult for me to step out of the flow of experience and write but when I do it such a joy - eventually I will tell you how much and why I love the Italians!

I hope the supposed first year of the new Millennium began auspiciously for each of you, however grand or quiet your celebration. My love goes to you as we walk into a glistening new year. Agouri! Zena

"Visiting Paris in the winter is like making love to a woman with her clothes on."
                                        … Jacques Barzaghi

With my limited experience in this activity, the metaphor is probably accurate, even though in either case the effort can still be quite tantalizing. Indeed, the volupte et luxe of Paris' streets and alleyways were evident even in inclement weather. M. and I arrived at three in the afternoon after an uneventful but elegant ten hours in United's business class. The food service was non-stop and very tasty, the Champagne and Cotes du Rhone a nice welcome to France. Sitting next to me was a man who had just bought an old stone house in a very small village in Provence. Since he was hoping to do some work there over the holiday and was renting a car, he invited us for a ride to our hotel: a generous beginning to our compact three days in Paris.

We checked in to the Select Hotel, an old façade containing a remodeled deco-ish interior on a very nice square right off "Boule Mish" as the Boulevard St. Michel is called. This is in the fifth arrondissment next to the Sorbonne, very well situated for our walking adventures. I've never seen a room so well designed to conserve space. The door to the bathroom slides a few more feet to enclose the toilet area: one door for two purposes. I was soon to discover this economy of space is the norm.

Our first evening was spent with Charles, who drove us to the Champs d' Elysee where each tree lining the boulevard was wrapped Christo-like in gauze and lit with color-morphing strobes - very surreal, very French. A monstrous Ferris wheel rotated more slowly than its computerized, synchronized starburst light show. Traffic crawled all the way to the Tour Eiffel, which was, of course, spectacularly lit in anticipation of this city's grand New Year's celebration. Ironically, our first dinner was an Italian pizza accompanied by a bitter little Brouilly, in perilous proximity to vinegar. On a trip to the loo, I discovered another example of the French conservation of interior space: the bathroom was so small that the door hit the light switch as you entered and exited, leaving no wasted inch or kilowatt. Incredable.

The next day we walked to the Louvre and spent hours saturating our visual cortexes with exquisite fine art and way over-the-top decorative art. The Mona Lisa was surrounded by so many spectators that the crowd was more the event than the painting. M. found some old judge with a hairdo just like mine so I posed next to his marble coif, hoping the resemblance wasn't too great. We couldn't find M.'s face in stone, search though we might. In the afternoon we metro'd to Montmartre and spent some time with god in the spectacular church - our meditation was dangerously close to a nap. The view of the city from the hill was worth a few photos as we scurried back underground to escape the stiff, cold evening wind.

Having failed to find two seats at Alain Ducasse's eponymous hot three-star restaurant, we made reservations at recommendation number two, Tour d'Argent. This translates as either Tower of Silver or Tower of Money, depending on your perspective. We certainly contributed to the latter. Knowing nothing more than the name, we arrived after a half-hour walk in cruel shoes to a rather stuffy though elegant dining room with a beautiful view of the Seine. It turns out to be the oldest restaurant in all of Paris, opening in 1582 and having its fork officially consecrated by King Henri III.

Our initially diffident sommelier presented M. with a three-inch wine list. This could have been daunting had we not already narrowed our choice to a Gevrey-Chambertin to celebrate the family name of Gevrey on my mother's Burgundian side of the tree. We found a 1985 that was delightful and with just enough character to be a worthy companion to the many courses that followed. Normally a menu with no listed prices might seem intimidating, but M.'s intention was to break the bank with this one meal, so we ordered with impunity. Little did I know that our appetizers EACH cost as much as our little $100 pinot noir. We had, after all, fois gras with black truffles - or were they white?: two huge dollops decorated with twin sauces, the port wine being my favorite. Little bread puffs were nestled in for a picture-perfect composition. Even though we could feel the fat depositing in our veins, the lusciousness of the dish was exquisite. No one is more fun to eat extravagantly with than M: we oohed and aahed and rolled our eyeballs as if sex were mere seconds away.

It was the lamb that came next, however. The most sublime lamb I've ever had in my life. Haricort vertes and puffy chippy potato things. Mouth melting. M. ordered the beef, a little less enticing, but we shared. We skipped salad and cheese, heading straight for some dessert and THEN two trays of petite fours, because the waiter said he could tell we liked them so much. Claude Terrail, the present owner, had come by earlier with a welcome and now a goodbye - the French really aren't as snotty as we've pegged them to be. We were bursting and eventually taxied home at 11:30 to leaden sleep. A memorable meal for the nearly last supper of 1999.

The next morning found us at the glorious Musee d'Orsay, which is surely now my favorite museum in the world (not saying that much given how many more I have to see). Standing in front of van Gogh's self portrait with that swirling blue-green background was hyper-real and transcendent. The marble sculptures were pure and perfect form, light bodies from some parallel universe, faces I can imagine knowing in a dream. Again, hours spent feasting.

Not content with mere metaphor, M. and I were ready for a true French brasserie lunch and had heard that Chez Pauline was the place to go. At nearly half the tariff of the previous night's dinner, it was a hedonist's paradise, with an affable portly chef and a slightly ingratiating waiter (mon dieu!). Halfway through yet another bottle of burgundy, we began a competitive rhapsody of the food on our plates in quite obscene terms: my mound of flayed rabbit captured in a black bloody pool of jus was an easy mark. Here is M: "very earthy, gamey and peaty - for people with strong passions and hard dicks - meadow bog, humus, moist underbelly of verdant forests pungent with flavors of brilliant decay, noble rot and armpits." I think he has a future as a food critic, no?

We staggered home through a maze of enclosed shopping arcades, encouraging the cleansing movement of blood through our feted tissues. An evening of packing and going early to bed prepared us for our 4:00 a.m. wake-up call. Off to Orley airport, pre-dawn on Christmas Eve, M. flying to Tel Aviv, me to Torino. A very satisfying impression of Paris with her clothes on; maybe the next visit she'll be naked in the springtime.

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