Paris

In Paris we rented out an apartment in the 6th for the week. It was very sweet, better-appointed than we expected, with a lovely internal courtyard as in all the best old apartment buildings in Paris. We mostly mooched around Paris, eating vast quantities of cheese and ritually bathing ourselves in the always excellent espresso. We stuck our head into a few churches, watched old men chewing the ends of their baguettes on the street, gulped red wine at street tables in the Marais. We freaked ourselves out in the catacombes, where 18th- and 19th-century bones had been artfully arranged in a tribute to death. A day trip to Versailles provided opulent vistas and a pre-Revolutionary frisson. Parisian for a week: we were despondent when we left.