January 19th, 2016

Nice, France.

And then we had a hot drink, and missed our train… lulled into complacency by an information agent’s information (twenty minutes before, the train will be displayed on the screen for which track to go to), whispered into inattention by the calm and serene atmosphere of a train station without announcements, we were happily sitting in a corner near a café, sipping tea and coffee, backs to the tracks, as our perfectly-timed train slipped off and away.

I will say this, only in France could you buy baguettes at the train station cafe, not to mention how delicious the pastries and sandwiches looked.

I was upset and she was not, I remonstrated myself, chided and scolded and beat on myself and she laughed and said “you know, I find it pretty funny that we missed our train.” I came around to the humour, and what could possibly follow but almost the best three hours we have spent here yet.

image

image

image

From the Gare de Lyon to the Bastille, to the Port de l’Arsenal, to the Seine, to a little green crêperie so crowded that the waiter pulled the table out from the wall bench so I could sit down, mere millimeters from the fellow to my left. The same waiter later had to push an empty table closer to the wall simply so he could serve those at the next. After a few Paris cafés I begin to properly appreciate the amount of space in our first eatery, where our server would skate on the tiled floors in his shining black shoes every time he approached a corner to turn.

I thought of taking a picture of my first crêpe, but then I looked at it, and I ate it.
It was delicious.

January 18th, 2016

How quickly time flies when you’re feeling exhausted, isn’t that how it goes? For certainly it has gone, and I have felt it fly. In the morning we traipse on out of Paris, and take a train to Nice to stay for a few days. It was chosen instead of going to the alps, mostly due to the significantly less freezing weather and our lack of adequate footwear for snow. It’s cold here, not so numbing as Boston or biting as New York, but in a seeping, creeping, and tiring way. Likened (not by me) to the London fog that would pad through streets and slink around corners, it is wearying. The sun rises at eight thirty and sets at half five, and the first morning we stepped out for coffee and a croissant the sky was a brilliantly deep and bright blue, one lone star hanging over the Palais de Luxembourg.

Paris is enchanting but she bleeds now into the sky, her cityscape marred by a tower that looks like an implant from New York, a highrise that should be forbidden in such an historic city and, in truth, actually is. I don’t know exactly how this one was allowed to be built but you can see it from all over and I don’t like it.

image

Possibly this is the same reaction as of those who opposed the keeping of the Eiffel Tower after the 1860 or so world fair. I do not know.

image

Of all the places I have seen before and return to now, Notre Dame stands as one still capable of stirring the spirit, and I count myself truly lucky to have had the good fortune to be standing inside when an adult choir walked to the front of the seating and began to sing. Sopranos that flew in the vaulted ceilings on the uplifting drafts of metsi and contralto, baritones and basses that trembled the stone to the tenors’ clear ring. You cast a spell on me minstrels, and I will follow as if the piper were calling. They sang separately at first, women then men, and came together at the end before leaving with barely a whisper, and a quickly silenced applause. A brief hug, a smile, and gone.

image

I think the only irritation was the sudden rush of people with phones, cameras, go pros, eager and ready to record. I find myself more and more reluctant to use my phone, wanting only to check locations and basic directions as one would on any map, happy to otherwise leave it in its place in my pocket when out and about. Present, but unseen. I do not want to have to look everything up online, what discoveries can be made if everything you approach is from the internet? I want to go out in search of what it is I look for, and come back sated. In the beginning, when every bite tasted better than anything back home, this seemed the easiest thing, but even Paris can supply a traveller with a day of disappointing food.

image

January 15th, 2016

Charles de Gaulle airport:

20160115_055138.jpg

If we don’t come back, someone come after us, but make sure you find the immigration, customs, passport control after entering France. We may have been taken aside for finding ourselves halfway across Paris with no sign of any such formalities since Iceland. Is this Schengen? Curiouser and curiouser. In other news, we have arrived in Paris, and I am quite hungry.

January 14th, 2016

JFK, New York.

And then it was us, and then we were off. Packed and strapped and checked out of our New York hotel home. It’s official, we are beginning our trip! So, of course, on the very last morning we finally find somewhere that still serves eggs after eleven. In fact, they serve up breakfast all day… how ever did we miss this place before?

There is an appeal in these bustling streets I don’t remember feeling last time I was in this wild city. Is it a factor of spending so much time on my own, out in the world, the wilderness, the desert? Is it my inner and quashed city girl emerging? I’ve always had a thing for the bright lights. All gone now though, we are at the gate waiting for our flight, I have said my goodbyes to the city and my friend, and though I may return again, most likely she will be gone. There is nowhere lonelier than a city where you have no friends.
Thank goodness for big, sprawling, everywhere families.

I hope for rest on the flights, and hope I do not hope in vain. I need sleep, as evidenced by the paragraph of rambling I just removed.

January 3rd, 2016

Dear Mr Freeman,

Please, allow me to skip over beginnings. I’m in Boston now and it’s cold, colder than Wellington though far less windy, and I’ve been just as jetlagged as I was then in that small coastal city. The change from tropic to temperate to San Francisco to this should have been shocking, but perhaps the noticeable lack of falling snow here has softened the blow. Besides, I’ve been wanting for some winter weather these past six and a half years… or is it longer?

Martin, can I call you Martin?, well, I’ll roll with it, we’re all friends here. Martin, I’ve lived mostly in the USA for six years, and now I find it so very difficult to return to New Zealand. I gained my independence in a different world and going back drops me right into my old habits. Still, I am glad to have gone home for this past Christmas, to the place where I first began dreaming of the world.

A small child, on a small farm, in a small country, with a big family, and a big world-view. First a National Geographic writer, then a travel photographer, then an astronaut… but I never thought any of those dreams would come true, they were too big, too vast, too fantastic. And now, now that I really am out in the world, making plans and booking flights, it all feels unreal.

Tell me, Martin, how do you travel and see and feel, and not be overwhelmed? A learning process, I suppose. How do you move without regret? You do not, there will always be something you didn’t do or see. Something you missed out on, or chose to give up.

But there is one thing that lingers, from so long ago, from a trip home to New Zealand for Christmas, from a night in Wellington at a one-man show. Mr Martin Freeman, I was jet-lagged and self-conscious from not having showered, and I came away wishing I had said something other than I did.

I wish I had told you that I liked your hat.