Vistas & Byways Review - Spring 2019
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Journeys
Nonfiction


Paris: A State of Mind
​by Cathy Fiorello


I went to France the first time because I couldn’t get into Italy. The Italian tour I wanted was booked and my travel agent offered France as a consolation. This turned out to be one of the happiest mishaps of my travel life. After two weeks of glorious drives through Normandy, Brittany, and the Loire Valley, we made the final push into Paris where, after three days, the tour would end. My husband, who had studied art in Paris a lifetime ago, knew just where to lead me in the brief time we were there. We checked into our Right Bank hotel, crossed the boulevard to the Louvre Museum, and paid our respects to the Grandes Dames of Paris art. We looked in on the Mona Lisa, sprinted from the Winged Victory to Venus de Milo and Diana the Huntress, then circled the Three Graces. On the way to the exit, we passed some Raphaels and a Titian or two.
 
“Now I want you to see the real Paris,” he said as we walked out of the museum into a steady drizzle. We crossed the nearby Pont Royal to the Left Bank, wandering through its narrow streets without a map, without a plan, without an umbrella—soaking up the rain and the delights we encountered at every turn.
 
The next day was crammed with bus tours. You can’t see Paris from the windows of a bus; it’s a walking city. I longed to be on foot, free to linger at places I had only read about. On our walk through the Left Bank the day before I had breathed in the essence of Paris and had yet to exhale when we boarded the plane for home. My personal travel compass was fixed in “return” position. I knew I would be back.
 
I have friends whose goal it is to see the world. They keep a list, crossing off where they’ve been and checking where they’ll go next. They wonder why I keep going back to Paris. They don’t understand. For me, Paris is not about seeing, it’s about being. This is where I want to be. John Baxter, an Australian ex-pat living in Paris, says, “The love of a city, like the love of a person, often begins in the first instant of encounter.”* That’s what happened to me the first time I walked across Pont Royal to the Left Bank. I never knew something had been missing from my life until I got to Paris.
 
More than twenty years have passed since I first saw Paris and I’ve yet to become blasé about the city; it never fails to enchant me. The crowds that accompany the tourist season, the scaffolding covering a favorite monument, the ubiquitous strike or two--nothing detracts from my joy in being back. I’m an unabashed romantic when it comes to the City of Light. As I walk the cobbled alleys and explore the Left Bank shops, I imagine the impoverished authors, now revered, who slept on cots at the Shakespeare & Company bookstore while they were learning their craft. I see a young Hemingway at La Closerie des Lilas creating characters that are now literary legends. I smile when I come to the Bouquinistes on the banks of the Seine and see that the “authentic” first print copy of The Little Prince is still there. I don’t look for the new, the “in” attractions of the current tourist season. I need to touch bases with the old, to be reassured that the Paris I hold dear hasn’t changed.
 
We had that trip to Italy that we were booked out of the previous year. Being of Italian descent, I experienced many nostalgic moments. The kind, eager-to-please people brought back memories of the relatives still steeped in old-world customs who were so much a part of my childhood. Even the food was reminiscent of what I had eaten at their tables. The landscape was captivating—is there a city more magical than the floating mirage of Venice? That’s where I should have lost my heart. But it was too late; I had left it in Paris.

​*Quote from the novel by Baxter, John, The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris (Harper Collins, NY, 2011).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Find your passion and follow it!   -  Oprah Winfrey

​Cathy Fiorello
’s passions are food, Paris, and writing. A morning at a farmers’ market is her idea of excitement and visiting Paris is her idea of heaven. And much of her writing is about food and Paris. She worked in publishing in New York, freelanced for magazines during her child-rearing years, then re-entered the work world as an editor. She moved to San Francisco in 2008 and published a memoir, Al Capone Had a Lovely Mother. In 2018, she published a second memoir, Standing at the Edge of the Pool. Cathy has two children and four grandchildren. Her mission is to make foodies and Francophiles of them all.
Other works in this issue:
Nonfiction
​Provence and Tuscany: Homegrown Contentment​
​Book Review
An Intrepid World Traveler
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​The
Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual arts by members of OLLI at SF State.
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​The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University​ provides material support to the Vistas & Byways volunteer staff.

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  • Contents
    • In This Issue
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
    • Poetry
    • Visual Arts
  • About Us
  • Contributors
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • LATEST V&B ISSUE