Note: Journaling is a great way to build your stories. When you keep a journal you can record details that would be long forgotten if you let days pass. Then when you look back at your pages, you relive those moments and your stories emerge. Sometimes journals can be stories in themselves.

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In the morning I call the couple upstairs, they say to give them 20 minutes or 30. And I give them 30 and then call again. I go up, they are all packed and anxious to go, yet there I am, holding them up. And he tries and even hooks up the cable, but nothing.

I go back down and phone Isabelle, “it is my computer,” I say, there is something wrong with it. Finally after all that, she has tried everything and we have a resolution. She says she will loan me her travel laptop. I am staying so many days, it would not be good to be without a connection for all those days she advises and I agree. She is more than accommodating. Plus she is sending her assistant over the next morning at 9:30 with the laptop and to see if she can figure out anything.

Et voila, alors, there you have it.

I leave on my Fashion Tour. Take the metro and am 5 min. late. It is cold outside. The guide tells us all about the history of fashion in Paris. She is very knowledgeable. The fashions of the court of Louis and Marie Antoinette, the changes in fashion. We pass through  small streets and I have no idea where I am but it doesn’t matter at all.

Then down one street we pass the restaurant, the Grand Colbert. Ah, this was the restaurant in Something’s Gotta Give with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson where they reunited over that dinner.  I want to go there.

After the tour, I am walking around the block one more time going back to the restaurant and as I approach the door, 3 women from my tour group are entering, I say, “can I join you?” and they say “yes.”

Well it is generous of them to allow me to join them. The lunch is very nice. I was happy to lunch at the Grand Colbert. It is a classic place with brass and wood and cozy and a long dark wood bar with alcoves of tables creating a clubby feeling. A lot of red and black and lamps, even in the day, it felt like an evening in the movie, where the waiters bustled around and they ordered more wine and talked and laughed and had the best food.

After lunch we walk around the blocks together, it has been a companionable lunch and walk. Again as I leave them  I am a little sad. They each have their connection, their husband. I am alone. And yet, I look at the street and the day and think, I am in Paris, wandering around totally lost, and yet not lost. I am OK. I am going to dinner tonite with new friends and I am grateful. Things are good. The sun is shining and my own sun comes out from behind the clouds and I search my way, happily without referring to my map. I am in Paris after all!

I walk and walk thinking, just “find the river, find the Rue de Rivoli.” I find it, of course, without even taking out my map. Cross the river and decide not to walk all the way back but to take the metro. And that goes smoothly. And then I decide to find the supermarche and walk and walk around my neighborhood, finally finding it. I buy laundry detergent after looking at all the boxes for many minutes and I also get some coffee. I walk home and take a nap for a full hour before I need to get ready to get the metro to go to dinner and find Jack Schwartz with the green tennis shoes.

At Notre Dame, I am in the crowd in the plaza in front of the cathedral when my phone bleeps with a text message. Jack and I are texting each other in the crowd. “Did you get lost,” he says? “I am here,” I reply. My phone bleeps again. “I am in front of the door,” he says. As I am texting a reply, he walks up to me, a man with a puzzled look, a green cap as he said, and green tennis shoes. How did I not see him? I didn’t go close enough to the door. “I was standing right in front of the door,” he says. I laugh. I didn’t get that far up.

So nice to connect!

We walk companionably down the street, he is a friendly, warm person. The streets wind in and around. We are going towards Les Halles.

Dinner with Jack and Randy and Steve and Eric and Susan and Susan’s son Omar. It is wonderful to meet new people. Jack is so friendly and we continue our conversation through dinner. Omar is across from me, a very personable fellow just waiting to graduate later in the month. He is ready to get on with life after the university.

Take the metro back to my apartment, Jack and Randy walk me all the way to the metro stop that would be best for me and we walk along the Seine and the lights are on and the river looks so nice and the city of Paris is so wonderful to be in. It is less busy now, darkness has fallen.

It is an easy trip home and I am in bed before I know it.

You can continue to read about my Paris trip here: Day 4 http://tellourlifestoriesblog.com/2011/05/26/wednesday-april-13-2011-monets-giverny.aspx