Jan 21st --- AH! out on a walk to the department store today to purchase some clothes for the next week (luggage is still lost) we passed by a true traditional book binder that was hand tooling the leather binding. OH!!! I have a new dream job!
*Le Jardin d' Luxembourg*
It's beautiful here, serene. The terns and pigeons disturbed from the fountains lift off and dance lazily around the palace. It's cold here, the french scurry about to and from work tightly wrapped in wool scarves and coats. What else can be said about them, then a people in perpetual motion living i a city stuck in time. I would love 
to see this Jardin in spring or summer, but for now it remains a place of possibility and probably beauty.There is a carousel in the Jardin, with each revolution a kid yells out how many times he has gone around. "Trois, Trois, Trois!!" he is quite enthusiastic about it. It makes me think of all of the flocks of scooters rushing around town. I swear I have seen them, certain ones, a few times. Zip, zip, between the cars and buses. I am amazed that I have yet to see one sprawled out across the pavement. A fat little black pigeon sits down beside me, hoping I might shed a scrap or two of something unfrozen in his direction.
*Pantheon*
As we walk past the paintings of the story of Joan of Arc, the crowning of Charlamagne, and many more, it feels surreal to be standing at the site of the original Foccault Pendulum, or to be standing in the crypt of Marie Curie, Voltaire, and 
other magnificent people of the past. These have always been only names in my books, references, merely only existing as figments of my imagination. They didn't seem real until this moment, the one which I am sitting here, writing at the feet of Voltaire and hoping that one day I will achieve such literary greatness. It is cold inside the Pantheon, not nearly as much as it was outside, but the small heater we sit next to under a mural of Joan d' Arc warms us as we choose our next location. I would love to go to Notre Dame, but that might have to wait till another day when the battery in the camera has a greater charge. 
Definitely one of the joys of Paris in winter is the lack of tourists. I could only imagine how crowded the historical attractions are when they are full of 8 million camera toting Chinese, fashionable Russians, and rotund and obscure Americans on a holiday. 
It might be biting at Tom's nerves that I continually want to stop and write, but being in a part of the world that was once the bohemian capital of the world and was home to some of the greatest authors in history inspires me to express myself. Even if every now and then I imagine myself on this trip in other conditions.I love our little hotel with it's sloping stairs, broken spring arm chairs, toille wallpaper, and the sweet old lady behind the counter who appreciates my frustration at losing my luggage and all of my clean clothes. Oh well, making the best of it.
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