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relatively warm out, and I had suggested at the last train
station that we find a café with outdoor seating so we could
have a truly Parisian dining experience.

“Hup!—Hup!” she repeats, with another “Hup!” for each
menu she gently slaps down in front of us. With so many
options, we take our time deciding, but we order with little
difficulty—though she’s not fluent, our server’s English seems
better than she gives herself credit for. Soon enough, we are
dining on tuna, steak, and a platter of unfamiliar cheeses, but
not before our feisty maître d’ has to shoo a beggar away.

Our meals are simple in presentation yet still fancy,
perhaps because to us, the fact that they are French somehow
makes anything edible inherently fancier. The entrees alone
are enough to fill us up, so we decline dessert and coffee. A
few of us, before returning to our rooms in the Hotel
Ronceray next door, roam the adjacent sidewalks to see what
sort of places, if any are still open. But it’s almost 11 o’clock,
and even Paris—la Ville Lumière—has rolled up its sidewalks
for the night. It does not take much walking for us to
remember that we are tired, bleary, and sore all over, so we
soon return to the hotel. We’ll be leaving France for Vienna in
the morning, and we need to rest up for this next leg in our
journey—but not before furiously scribbling down stories,
notes, and lingering thoughts from what has been a surreal
and exhausting whirlwind of a day in the City of Light.

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