Dear Readers,

I frequent too many a café while traveling.

Once more, I write to you from a coffee shop, only this time I am in Paris on a street off of Avenue Montaigne, where we are working these few days.

London was as always lovely, and predominantly person-based, this time around, with my having the chance to spend extreme quality time with Hann & Charlie, Sumaira and even made a new friend: EMILY. I have placed her name in all-caps as that will make her v happy.

You may see all photos from London here.

We flew in to Paris on the day Europe shut down due to 1.3 cm of snow. As a Canadian, I was a little confused by the unraveling, but did enjoy watching my colleague trip out on 4 coffees, bouncing and smiling through Heathrow, Terminal 5. She was divine.

My first ever trip alone was to Paris, and I was likely 19 years of age. I don’t remember it being this incredible; most definitely not this sexy. There really is no way to explain it; it’s not that the people are more attractive, or that the weather is hot and humid, or that you’re getting felt up as you walk down the Champs-Élysées, but rather that it simply is.

It could be all the wine consumed, or the bread and cheese; it could be that their men have fantastic thick hair (1); it could be that breakfast is served until 11 a.m., so you may lounge in bed that much longer; it could be the attention to the smallest detail (all silverware, all china, all real butter and full bodied cream); it could be that everyone wears fur and this gives rise to a sort of animalistic hunter / gatherer environment, and really? Nothing spells s.e.x.y like bow and arrow; but chances are, it is that there exists here in Paris a true sense of indulgence and excess.

That and the fact that they wear their hearts on their sleeves, even though it takes them no less than two hours to get dressed. If the street corner doesn’t have a couple (or more) nearly screwing, then it has a couple (or more) yelling at one another (right before they practically screw). It’s amazing.

I am sort of in heaven watching them not care who watches them. Especially as we are really so puritan in our approaches to public displays of any emotion in North America, where propriety trumps.

For this reason, I have decided that I would like to be engaged to be married in this City. To ensure this happens, I have devised the following list (which I will, overtime, strike through like this as appropriate):

(1) Meet man.
(2) He falls in love with me; I with him.
(3) We travel to Paris.
(4) My mother hides in the suitcase.
(5) My father is on following flight with a gun.
(6) He is detained as gun is not registered. (Father, not man to propose.)
(7) Man – to whom I am simply “woman” – takes me to (insert his own special plan) and proposes to me.
(8) I start the next French Revolution, and document it all with my handy camera, updating Facebook as required.
(9) Above mentioned man and I fight on a street corner.
(10) We almost screw on same street corner, only our puritan sensibilities trump our momentary Parisien affliction.
(11) I purchase a t-shirt which reads: “I <3 Paris”
(12) My father is released from custody; my mother escapes the suitcase; and, we all live happily ever after.