Dear friends, I will tell you what a moment of sheer happiness is for your faithful correspondent: right now it’s 7.a.m. local time, I am in a beautiful, bright, quiet apartment on the east side of Paris; I had a long much-needed sleeping-pill-induced sleep last night, I am drinking a cup of coffee, and my best friend has just gone out to buy croissants and a fresh baguette. Le comble de bonheur, as they say around here. The height of happiness.

It was not fun yesterday, however. For some reason, I was more anxious than usual about this trip, and I’m always anxious about travel. The night before, Wednesday, I hardly slept. There was so much to do, organizing house, cat, plants, mail, other responsibilities – lists, notes, rushing about. Checking my carry-on – at the last minute I took out a belt because it was too heavy. And of course it was the most beautiful day so far of the year, blazing sun, whereas rain and grey predicted in Paris. Monique drove me to the UP Express, which was a blessing. Pearson was a zoo, more crowded than I have ever seen it – so much for people cutting back on travel. The flight left on time. With my travel points I’d bought a premium economy seat, which means only two across and a slightly wider seat, but still, misery all the way across, no sleep. The woman next to me, a sweetheart from rural Ontario going for the first time to Paris, watched Downton Abbey all night. I flailed.

Out into CDG airport, expecting the worst, as last year it was extremely disorganized and took forever to get through immigration. This year, far better. But the best was that I had an old ticket for the metro from CDG to Paris, though tickets are due to be phased out by June. I wasn’t sure it would work; if it didn’t, I’d have to schlep to a transit office and line up. But it worked! We landed at 10 and by 11 I was on the metro, miraculous. Got to the Airbnb near the Nation metro stop and miraculously, just as I entered the courtyard with a huge lilac tree, a voice called,”Beth,” and there was my best friend, who’d just arrived by train from Montpellier.

The flat is fabulous, two bedrooms, full of light and lovely things, fully equipped. The owner is a documentary filmmaker with great taste. We went out for lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant – wood-fired pizza, delicious, with a little white –  and I burst into tears, so happy, sitting outside with my best friend of 59 years, in this city where I lived at the age of 14. Also, a bit dizzy with fatigue.

Then we bought groceries. French grocery stores are a thrill, the selection, the wine section – we bought of course cheese and stuff for dinner, which Lynn cooked – endives wrapped in ham with melted emmenthal on top. Plus more cheese afterwards, especially a superb Tomme de Savoie, be still my beating heart. Accompanied by a little red, no, actually, a really good Bordeaux. And much much much much talk. I managed to stay awake till 9 – this after two nearly sleepless nights – and crashed.

Today, after the breakfast croissant – I learned another French rule, we bought rhubarb jam yesterday but you do NOT eat jam with croissants which are already rich – we made the mistake of setting off without an umbrella. We walked to my favourite flea market, Marché d’Aligre, jam-packed with useless treasure, although I did score a purple French notebook that Lynn says is worth at least 20 euros – for 1 euro. We crossed the Seine and wandered through le Jardin des Plantes, that I visit every year because the magnificent Japanese cherry tree there is where I scattered my father’s ashes. I visit him every time I’m here, and this year Lynn visited him too. We set off to walk along the Seine toward Notre Dame, but it started to rain hard. We were standing right by a BatoBus ticket stand, the boat that goes up and down the Seine stopping regularly, like a bus, and it pulled up right at that moment, so we bought tickets and got on, sat inside seeing the sights of Paris from the river. By the time we got off, the rain had stopped, though it continued spitting all day.

We ended up at one of my favourite streets, Faubourg St. Antoine, which, like where we are living, is real Paris, not a tourist in sight. Stopped for lunch finally outside at a café – restaurants close after lunch until dinner, but the cafés are open. Had a delicious lunch outside with a little chardonnay and fantastic people watching, then went nearby to Flying Tiger where I always buy stylish reading glasses for 3.5 euros, and then Monoprix nearby, the best French store, just to look. Home by 5, when the rain was predicted to start in earnest. We’d walked 10 kilometres. Now a quiet evening at home with our devices, watching something together, and a repeat for dinner of yesterday’s lunch, and talking talking talking.

On the plane I swore I would not put myself through the torture of a transAtlantic overnight flight again, so no more Paris. But the minute I walked out into the day, even in the grey, even in the rain, I fell in love all over again. The beauty everywhere here is breathtaking – buildings, parks, gardens, people. The long snaking lines of schoolchildren, all beautifully dressed – how do they do it? Almost everyone, even very old women, chic. The history at every step – the plaque outside a school commemorating the Jewish children murdered by the Nazis, or the woman killed in June 1944, “mort pour la France.” The menu for the week’s lunches posted outside a kindergarten, like a gourmet restaurant, all organic and a lot of it vegetarian. The bakeries on every block. The bicycles everywhere, because the socialist mayors of Paris have cut back on cars and vastly increased the bike networks – as we ate lunch today, we saw many people driving their children in extended bikes set up to carry two or three.

I love it all. Lynn is of course aware of the downside of France too, the strangling rigidity of the ancient class system, the fact that French people, as the saying goes, live in heaven and think they live in hell, complaining all the time. Nothing on strike at the moment, she marvels. A right-wing fool of a candidate for president looming on the horizon. But right now, even as the rain falls, I could not feel luckier to be here. I cried several times, with sheer joy. We laughed at my sentimentality. And best, the astronauts got home safely.

Below, a little out of order: a travel store advertising travel to Canada, with a miniature birchbark canoe with a tomahawk, a teepee, and a spirit catcher; Madame with the dinner she cooked; moi in a favourite position; a glorious bakery; the cherry tree, hello Dad; the Conciergerie and the Musee d’Orsay from the river; a miscellaneous spring planting. Beauty.