Sundays and sausage in Paris

Postcard: Eiffel Tower sunset from St. Mande, Paris | Art by Todd Berman

We spend our first day in Paris brain dead in the spectacular St. Mande home of Claude and Jacqueline, long-time friends of Todd’s parents, grazing on a dozen French cheeses and reading Calvin + Hobbes. We follow it with an afternoon of mundane errands. We waste a perfect, blue-sky morning fighting with each other over something or other in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.

These are all things we have not had time for in a while. Even with the fight, it’s somehow still a welcome change of pace.

Two and a half months in, we’ve been on the global road longer than either of us have traveled before. The hardest part has been giving up those lazy Sunday afternoons when we’d brunch at the divy Red Cafe, then return home to sprawl on the couch, read the paper, and watch a bad movie.

We get a taste of the leisurely parts of our on-hold life during a sleepover at Benjamin‘s, Todd’s childhood friend. While I lounge around with Benjamin and the vino-cultured Jean-Andre, Todd cooks up classic American brunch dishes like French toast and daring ones like saucisse lapin, rabbit sausage, with an endive and wild mushroom saute.

Later, Todd realizes that he’d mistakenly pronounced it “saucisse la pine” at the market. Hopefully the butcher did not take Todd’s mangled French literally, and didn’t give him what he asked for: penis sausage.