Loose Leaf Notes

1.  I call the photo above the Leaning Tower of Eiffel.

2. We spent our first of three days in Paris taking in the sights from the top of a double-decker bus.

3. We’re staying in the Vavin quarter, near the Mont Parnasse neighborhood, booked for us by our own Floyd Rose of the Winds travel concierge Jody Franko. I call the photo of the statue above The Penguin (from Batman).

4. When I took this picture from the top of the bus, I said to Joe, “Who needs David. I got this.” (We’re going to Italy next but skipping Florence.)

5. This is the view from our hotel window. Yes, there are pigeons.

6. And this was our first café breakfast.

7. I hadn’t been to Paris since around 1975, but my book The Jim and Dan Stories was here in 2006: The café table looks like a runway on which Jim and Dan, who both died in 2001, have landed in their other-world form. They have no arms and legs, no need to eat (even in Paris). Their surreal existence is now dependent on others. The couple in the background calmly eating are unaware of the book, as if it doesn’t exist. Are they real? Are they living their lives still, as I type? More HERE.

8. I recently realized that when it comes right down to it, the only words I need to speak while in France and Italy are: parlez vous anglais? and parli inglese?

9. I haven’t followed the news in several days but have met French and English people who are appalled by the Trump administration.

10. I call this statue Pepperland (from The Yellow Submarine).

11. I thought I’d be going to the Louvre but it is so massively intimidating that I’ve been having second thoughts and taking pictures of the Mona Lisa on brochures and posters instead.

12. We took the above picture for my sister and my brother who like to post pictures of themselves and their spouses on vacation with beer in their hands.  Ours are rose shaped sorbets!

13. I call this “Joe’s new yoga pose.”

____________Thirteen Thursda / Read about our trip to Monet’s Garden HERE.