Between 1998 and 2022 (2019 to 2021 - were stay on Lopez years, pandemic and all that) I spent about two years cumulatively in France, mostly Paris, but also Languedoc, Bretagne and Burgundy.
As my relationship with Paris developed, I ended up always staying in the same apartment on rue Guénégaud.
Le 6iem became my neighborhood.
Being two minutes from la Seine became a basic component of my life and its purpose, meaning and essence.
The two times I didn't live on rue Guénégaud I lived on île de la Cité - four floors up.
Living two minutes from la Seine and, alternately, four floors up from her, fostered a special and ineradicable relationship.
On the Island I never shut my windows.
My River spoke to me - even in my sleep - and I never wanted to miss what she had to say.
And she said a lot.
I wrote a book about it.
Some of what she said to me was mystical, mysterious and untranslatable to the human tongue.
The overall result was an inculcation of curiosity in me about her: la Seine, my whispering friend.
So I went downriver to Rouen.
There is a little hotel on rue St Romain where I always stay.
It has a really big bathtub, a thing I didn't know that I cherished until I had filled that tub to the brim and soaked the chill of Rouen in winter out of my bones the first time I had stayed there.
The same street - rue St Romain - has the best creperie I have ever been to: Creperie St Romain.
But then to la Havre.
It's at the mouth of la Seine.
On the English Channel.
The day I got to le Havre I was amazed at the Soviet ugliness of the place.
I had become accustomed to France's beauty and charm.
Not so la Havre.
After asking around I found out that it had been decimated by the Allied Invasion.
So, a lot of charming old stuff had been rubbled.
Oh well, I said; I'm here now, so I need to make the best of it.
So, I walked out on the jetty into the English Channel and I met this guy.
And I found a great creperie and an even greater Indian restaurant.
I ended up loving la Havre.
And, if you climb some hills, there is a lot that the Allies left for posterity.
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