Le Jour du Depart! Monday, Apr 18 2011

It’s official at last. The best Monday in a long time. It’s the first day of my trip to Europe, after a mere 30-year delay. I’ll be meeting my brother and his wife Jane there. They’ve been renting an apartment in Nice for several months, welcoming numerous guests (location, location, location), and it sounds as though they’ve been having a wonderful time.  I’m taking my computer and am planning to chronicle my adventures by practicing my blogging skills. Why not? If a picture is worth a thousand words, then surely some words AND pictures will help me remember the trip. Funny how I don’t really get excited until the last minute. I even slept well last night, a rarity for an insomniac like me. I woke up for a minute, but listened to Gangaji on my iPhone and she seems to be my miracle tranquilizer.

So I’m packed and ready…just need to navigate the road to the San Francisco airport (an adventure in itself) and drop the car at the park and fly, and of course there’s the long flight across the U.S. and the Atlantic. If I remember that every step is part of the adventure, perhaps I can keep my equilibrium even with the  indignities of modern travel. It will be lovely to see Nice again.

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New Orleans visit rich and bittersweet Thursday, Nov 26 2009

Painting of Mardi Gras Indian

They call it the City that Care Forgot, the Crescent City, the Big Easy–it’s a great city for both saints and sinners. I lived there for 15 years and experienced a lot of life in many different ways. I hadn’t been back in 5 years and was a little apprehensive. My visit was short–only 5 days, and most of it was spent catching up with old friends I had known for 23 years, 17 years, 15 years. As usual, the city graced me with its amazing sensory complexity–architecture, food, personalities, celebration, and a little sadness walking those old familiar streets with so many memories. I was treated like a queen by my friends. There is almost no city I can imagine that has more joie de vivre than does New Orleans. I was hosted by friends Kathleen Turpel and her partner Alessia, (an Italian goddess ) at Nona Mia, and wined and dined by my darling “adopted daughters” Kimmie Kiviranna and Julie Pieri at restaurant August. My brother and his wife took us out to Marigny Brasserie and I got to see my nephew Val who has lived in New Orleans since he arrived to help with the Red Cross and eventually other agencies after Katrina. He was also born there–and that is another story for another post. One of my oldest and dearest friends, Cheryl Gautier and her lovely family greeted me with love and warmth and unsurpassed friendship. So that’s what I mean by rich and bittersweet. It’s hard to live so far away from long time friends, and from the very extraordinary city that is New Orleans.

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