Paris Diary - Bad Travel Karma and Matching Coats

When I was filing away my Paris pictures from a few weeks ago, I came across a travel diary I kept of Kate's and my visit last November, so here for your reading pleasure....

Paris Diary, Nov 5

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Barbara - bad travel karma continues - traveling companion shows up wearing the SAME jacket. Now we have to go all over Paris looking like not-too-imaginative lesbians....

Andrew  -You need to upgrade to imaginative lesbians

Murray  - Say away from my fantasies

I always have bad travel karma, or to put in more precisely, my trips always start off badly, once I’m at my destination the first day under my belt, thing usually pick up quite nicely. This one began the morning I was to leave when one of my diamond earrings fell down the drain of the bathroom sink. You just know the day is going to go downhill from there.

Having got to the airport more or less in tact, leaving kids and husband at security, I decided to get a manicure at the gate, my usual pre-travel treat, and the manicurist cut my cuticle so badly we had to staunch the blood. Karma, bad or otherwise has some sort of celestial timing of its own, my travel companion, Kate, showed up at that very moment wearing the EXACT SAME jacket as me. Great, we get to spend a week walking around Paris looking like a pair of not too imaginative lesbians.

The windows at the Bon Marche made me laugh out loud. In case you didn't figure it out,  it's all about the lingerie.

Mark Twain was Right, a day in Lucerne

I'd been told I should really go to Lucerne before I left Switzerland, so today I bought a train ticket and took the short trip from Basel to Lucerne. It was supposed to be a beautiful day, 16C and sunny, but when I got there at 11:00 Lucerne was shrouded in fog. But fog is just what you need when you go to visit the Dying Lion monument. Mark Twain said it was the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world. I sat there for a long time looking at it, in the almost total silence of that place. I finally had to shake it off and head back to the old town and as I approached the lake, the sun burned through the clouds, the water sparkeled, the swans swam in graceful circles and the world, or at least Lucerne seemed to come to life again.

Basel

Well after a long absence, my first blog entry in what, 18 months? Somehow I just ran out of stream, although I doubt mine is the only blog out there who has been abandoned by its writer.

Be that as it may, I'm back with something to write about as I'm in Europe for two weeks. Basel and Paris to be exact. I'm in Basel for business. I love the city. It has an old town core with winding streets, and beautiful cathedral at its heart.

I'm also loving being back in a part of the world where spatzle is served with almost every entree, and if it's not spaztle, then it's rosti. It's the middle of hunting season here, so the menus are filled with venison. I've feasted on hirsh this and hirsh that almost every night. I could quit literally eat my way across Europe if given half the chance.