Context

Paris seemed all loud and smelly until we went to Barcelona; upon our return to the City of Lights, though, the French capitol struck me as reasonably calm and fragrant, so I guess it’s way more about me than it is about the place; perhaps that’s the key lesson to take from our trip abroad.

But if indeed one learns most about the subjective nature of human experience from heading off here and there, then why go anywhere at all? Couldn’t I have simply stayed in my living room and meditated—that is, made a visit to the vaporium and stared at the inside of my eyelids?

Probably not, since I’m probably not that creative; I need to be shown things very different than what I’m used to to enable me to see what’s right in front of my face—which is, I guess, just another way of noting that, as fine a vacation as this has been, we’re all ready to get back home.

Mimi’s looking forward to gorging on multimedia: she’s already planned her strategy for simultaneously emailing, instant messaging, Club Penguining, watching TV, talking on the phone, and listening to her iPod.

Jen’s especially ready to eat recognizable food from her own kitchen and have organic honey in her morning tea and I’m hoping to get a few longer bikes rides in over the next few days, with any luck at least a few of those enhanced through the application of my favorite herbal remedies I’ve eschewed over the last three-quarters of a month, Europe being exotic enough without having to stir up the pot, so to speak, no pun intended.

It was nice, in any case, to have one last day in Paris; we visted the flea market and I found the perfect souvenir: a vintage tin figurine of a cyclist drinking from a bottle as he pedal; and as hot as it was in the metro and around town, after Barcelona, it seemed temperate.