A Bon Voyage: I love The Atlantic

Today was a great day in the storied history of yours truly moving places. Unlike some past trips marred by logistial SNAFUs - the cognitively impaired flat tire road trip to the Cleveland Clinic, the broken fuel gauge on the flight to San Francisco - Today's voyage rose from behind the smoldering ash plume of Eyjafjallajökull to deliver my most pleasant travel experience in memory.

The Highlights

1) I dropped my special lady friend back in the city, encountering no traffic and finding parking spots with ease despite street cleaning. Swinging by the Apple store to replace a gimpy battery, I was jumped to the head of the line at the genius bar without an appointment, given a replacement battery free of charge.

2) There was no traffic on the way to JFK, no line check-in, no congestion at security, and no madness boarding.

3) While I had feared a packed plane as a result of volcanic fears, there were entire empty rows beckoning for weary passengers to sprawl out and retire in luxurious slumber.

4) The slight delay in take-off was more than made up for in-air. More importantly, the lack of online multimedia entertainment gave me a chance to plow through this month's Atlantic Monthly, catching up on Christopher Hitchens' self-important but fastidiously engaging romps through politics and culture. (Everyone who knew the title of this post was a pun, you get 5 points and a gold star).

5) I befriended some kind ladies in the plane who split a cab with me to Paris, saving me 50 Euros (that's roughly 3.4 million USD).

6) At the airport, I exchanged information with two astoundingly talented artists, Jade Fourès-Varnier and Vincent de Hoÿm, who happen to live very close to my hotel in Montparnasse. I spent the afternoon lying on the grass in their beautiful garden, listening to music, drinking green tea and touring Jade's sculpture studio.

Check out her work here: http://www.jadefouresvarnier.fr/

7) Somewhere in the middle I got lost on a 10 mile walk that took me past the Eiffel Tower, Les Invalides, and culminated in a leisurely lunch of salade niçoise and espresso near the intersection of Boulevard Raspail and Rue de Grenelle in the St. Germain neighborhood of Paris.

8) Did I mention that it's ~75 degrees F (~24 C), that my hotel let me check in at 9AM? This must be the sort of euphoria a Jewish mother feels when her son becomes a doctor and gets engaged on the same day.