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GoodbyeParis

A book proposal for

Submitted by

Joe Bunting4155 Venice Lane

Carpinteria, CA [email protected]

805.705.9245

A Community Adventure in the City of Light

Presented On

October 1, 2014

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Goodbye Paris Book Proposal Overview

I. CONTENT

A. Premise

In the Spring of 2014, Joe Bunting went on a two month trip to Paris with his wife and 10 month old son, Mars Bars. While there, he asked thousands of his followers to choose adventures for him to accomplish in Paris. He got dozens of suggestions, from meeting a stranger in a Montmartre bar to shadowing a street performer in front of Notre Dame to exploring the thousands of miles of caves below Paris. This is the story of his adventures… and everything that went wrong along the way.

B. Unique Selling Proposition

If consumers in the target market purchase and read Goodbye Paris, then they will:

• Wake up the next morning with a keen desire to visit Paris and see a different side of the city than most tourists view.

• Have a sense of satisfaction, as if they had visited Paris themselves.• A deeper understanding of Parisian history and culture.• Know how to better fit in as a tourist.

Because the book will:

• Share unique sites, restaurants, and experiences that most tourists don’t realize exist.• Tell vivid stories from the young couple’s two month stay in Paris, featuring street-side

cafés, illegal explorations of the secret caves underneath Paris, lavish dinners, warm fresh-baked baguettes, long walks along the Seine, trips to the open-air markets, painting in the Luxembourg Gardens, French cooking lessons, and learning the art of French romance.

• Explain the history of Paris, which is visible everywhere, especially the history of the Modernist writers and artists (e.g. Hemingway, Stein, Pound, and Joyce) who made Paris their home in the 1920s.

• Tutor potential tourists in cultural faux pas learned over the couples’ two month stay.

C. Overview

The manuscript will be divided into five parts:

Part I: ParIs, You’re LookIng oLd and tIred

Paris certainly wasn’t Joe Bunting’s first choice. Why not go somewhere unique (not to mention less expensive!) Phnom Penh or Buenos Aires or even Prague? Paris, to him, was over-rated and over-priced. But when Grandma decided to get married in an Italian villa outside of Florence for her 85th birthday, he decided going to Paris was the only way to convince his wife to stay in Europe a few months longer.

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This section tells the story stories:

• Grandma’s planned elopement in Florence• “Paris might not be so bad”• The Perfect Apartment… Canceled

A chapter will be spent on each.

Part II: ParIs, You sIren, WhY do You Make It so hard to Love You

Getting to Paris wasn’t as easy as Joe thought it would be. First, the apartment they were renting in Montmartre was canceled just a month before they were set to leave. Then, the new apartment they found in Saint Germain was $1000 a month over their budget. Worse, the plane tickets, which they were planning to use airline miles to purchase, were about 40,000 miles more than expected. Were they ever going to get to Paris?

This section tells the stories of:

• “How are we going to afford Paris at all?”• How I got hundreds of people to tell me what to do in the city of Light• How we almost missed our flight, three times!


Part III: ParIs, rosencrans Was rIght about You

Joe and Talia had made it to Paris. Now they just had to get to their apartment. This was made more difficult since they couldn’t afford a taxi and so they had to maneuver the train stations with six suitcases and bags between them plus a baby. Oh, and it was raining. Oh, and the door code on the apartment didn’t work (it had been reset the day before). Welcome to Paris! They were locked out, in the rain, with a baby. Now what?


• Welcome to Paris!• Why You Shouldn’t Land in Paris on a Sunday• Walking to the Louvre, where diarrhea strikes• Making Friends: French and Otherwise


Part Iv: ParIs, MInd If I tILt on Your WIndMILL?

Hundreds of friends and followers suggested adventures for Joe and Talia to accomplish in Paris. The highlight was when Joe was challenged to explore the illegal caves and catacombs

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underneath Paris (there are about 1,000 miles of caves below the city). When his original guide to the caves fell through, he thought he wouldn’t be able to accomplish the adventure. Then, by chance, a poet friend connected him to Giles Thomas, a world expert on the caves of Paris. On the last night of his stay in Paris, Joe waded through knee-deep water, crouched through waist-high caves, and discovered the hidden German bunkers 180 feet below Paris.


• The Caves of Paris• The Catacombs of Paris• Asking Directions… in French• Chilling with Jim Morrison at Pére Lachaise Cemetery• Cooking in Paris• Painting in the Luxembourg Gardens (plus How to Sell Your Art on the Street)• French Onion Soup• Shadow a Street Performer (for € 1,000)• Perform Singing in the Rain Under the Arc de Triomphe• 10 Museums• French Romance• Paris from the Perspective of a One Year Old• The Lock that Broke Ponte des Artes’ Back• Visit Hemingway’s Favorite Bar• Meet a Stranger in a Café

A short chapter will be spent on each.

Part v: goodbYe, ParIs

It was one in the morning about a week before they were set to leave, and Joe had missed

the last train of the night. Joe rented a street bike and started peddling home. His route

took him past Notre Dame, past the Louvre, past one of Hemingway’s favorite cafés,

and through several romantic Parisian alleys. “Goodbye, Notre Dame,” he said as he rode

past. “Goodbye, Louvre. Goodbye, Seine. Goodbye, Paris.”


• Suicide Watch• Grandma in Paris• Goodbye Paris• Epilogue: Florence, Rome, and Grandma’s “Wedding”

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II. MANUSCRIPT

A. Manuscript Status

Several chapters have been finished, including the attached sample chapters. Several more (totaling about 20,000 words) are at some state of completion.

B. Special Features

Optional insert: photography from our adventures in Paris.

Also includes the Goodbye Paris Tourist Guide, a guide through some of the books’ best sites, as well as a tourist tips section and a recommended walking route.

The book will also have special online components at goodbyeparisbook.com, including special video segments, behind the scenes content, and extra chapters.

C. Anticipated Length

40,000 to 50,000 words.

D. Anticipated Completion Date

The manuscript can be completed within four months after commitment from a publisher.

III. AUTHOR INFORMATION

A. Background

Joe Bunting is a professional ghostwriter, author, and blogger. He is the publisher of TheWritePractice.com, a blog and online workbook for writers, and the creator of StoryCartel.com, a service to help authors get reviews on their books. He is the author of the bestselling book Let’s Write a Short Story! and the well-reviewed short story “Hands.” He lives in Santa Barbara, California with his wife and son.

C. Previous Writing

Joe Bunting is the ghostwriter and author of four books, including the highly-reviewed Kingdom Journeys by Seth Barnes and the bestselling writing instruction book, Let’s Write a Short Story. In addition to writing books, he is the founder of one of the top writing blogs online, The Write Practice, which receives about 135,000 visitors a month. He has contributed to Bible Study Magazine, Copyblogger, and other print and online publications.

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IV. THE MARKET

A. Demographic Description

The audience for Goodbye Paris will be middle-aged, middle- to upper-class readers who enjoy travel and have been, or want to go, to Paris.

B. Psychographic Description

This book’s audience will be made up of people who love travel and may or may not have been to Paris. A secondary demographic will be made up of people interested in crowdsourcing and social media who are intrigued about the idea of crowdsourced, crowdfunded world travel.

C. Affinity Group

Travel ChanelRick StevesDavid LebovitzFood NetworkKickstarter

D. Personal Marketing

Joe Bunting will engage his contacts with top bloggers like Jeff Goins, Laura Ortberg, Ally and Darrel Vesterfelt, and others. Joe Bunting will also market the book on Twitter, where he has over 17,500 followers combined over several accounts, on Story Cartel, a platform he created for authors, which has over 26,000 subscribed readers, and on The Write Practice, with over 14,000 subscribed readers.

E. Sample Cover Copy

What happens when you crowdsource your trip to Paris and hundreds of people suggest adventures, exotic meals, and people to meet in the City of Light?

Goodbye Paris tells the story of one couple’s adventure in Paris as they explore the caves underneath the city, try exotic food (tripe? yummy!), and take painting, cooking, and language lessons from the locals, all while taking care of their one year old son (or trying to). When you ask people what to do in Paris, be ready to try anything!

VI. COMPETITION

A. Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik. From the cover: “In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of the City of Light.… As Gopnik describes in this funny and tender book, the dual processes of navigating a foreign city and becoming a parent are not completely dissimilar journeys—both

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hold new routines, new languages, a new set of rules by which everyday life is lived.”

Similarities: Both Goodbye Paris and Paris to the Moon involve an American taking his wife and infant son on an extended stay Paris.

Differences: Written in 1995, Paris to the Moon is a well-written, but standard memoir. Goodbye Paris, on the other hand, is a crowdsourced memoir, behind the rules of the genre so that it’s almost a “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” memoir.

B. The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz. From the cover: “Like so many others, David Lebovitz dreamed about living in Paris…. But he soon discovered it’s a different world en France. From learning the ironclad rules of social conduct to the mysteries of men’s footwear, from shopkeepers who work so hard not to sell you anything to the etiquette of working the right way around the cheese plate, here is David’s story of how he came to fall in love with—and even understand—this glorious, yet sometimes maddening, city.”

Similarities: The tone of both memoirs is humorous and self-mocking. Both memoirs revel in the strangeness of French culture, and the awkwardness of an American trying to fit in.

Differences: While Lebovitz focuses on the food scene in Paris, Bunting takes in the literary aspects of Paris, both contemporary and historical.

C. The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain. Mark Twain’s best-selling memoir tells the story of a first-of-its-kind cruise to Europe and the Holy Land. With biting humor, Twain describes the adventures he and a group of Americans undertook, often teasing his fellow travellers and himself for their awkwardness in the face of other cultures.

Similarities: Both The Innocents Abroad and Goodbye Paris tell awkward and funny stories of Americans traveling abroad.

Differences: While The Innocents Abroad skips through dozens of different cities in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, Goodbye Paris focuses on the adventures of one couple (and a few of their American friends) and their adventures in Paris and Italy.

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VII. OUTLINE / CHAPTER SYNOPSIS

chaPter-bY-chaPter sYnoPsIs

Goodbye ParisA Community Adventure in the City of Lights

by Joe Bunting

ProLogue: hoW dId I end uP here?

Paris sounded like the perfect trip for a writer, but when Joe found himself nearly a hundred feet below the city of Paris in alone in an abandoned quarry at two in the morning equipped with “the smallest flashlight in the world,” he started to wonder why he ever signed up for this.

Part I: ParIs, You’re LookIng oLd and tIred

Introduction: Grandma is Getting Married

Blame this whole thing on Grandma. For her 85th birthday, Grandma decided to get married to her 75 year old fiancé in Florence, which meant the whole family was going to Europe. And since Joe and Talia were going to be there already, might as well stay for a couple of months, right?

Chapter 1: The Secret to Convincing Your Wife to Live in Paris

How do you convince your wife to leave her home, her family, her job, and go to Paris with her one-year old infant for two months? Step 1: Ask her to live in Paris for two months. Done!

Chapter 2: Our Perfect Apartment… Was Canceled

It hadn’t been easy, but Joe and Talia had found the perfect apartment in Montmartre. Then, it was cancelled only a month before they were set to leave! What were they going to do?

Part II: ParIs, You sIren, WhY do You Make It so hard to Love You

Chapter 3: Over Budget and Underpaid

After the apartment debacle, Joe had found a new place in Saint Germain and had even gotten a deal from the landlord for half the price. But it was still $2,100 a month and way out of their budget, especially since Talia was quitting her job. Paris would be the adventure of a lifetime, if only they could afford it.

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Chapter 4: How to Crowdsource Paris

Joe crunched the numbers and realized they could if they could just get an extra $600 they could afford Paris. How to get the money? Kickstarter seemed like an obvious choice, but what started as a simple project ballooned into a massive, crowdsourced adventure—Joe originally called it a choose-your-own-adventure memoir, but the CYOA publishers sent him a cease and desist letter—a project that raised more than seven times what he originally planned.

Chapter 5: We Almost Missed Our Flight—Three Times!

No one said traveling halfway across the world, especially with a one-year old, was going to be easy. Traffic accidents and last minute diaper bombs don’t help, either.

Part III: ParIs, rosencrans Was rIght about You

Chapter 6: Les Deux Magot in the Rain

The first thing Joe and Talia saw when they walked the stairs up from their metro stop was the green canopy of Les Deux Magot, the famous café Ernest Hemingway talked about in The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast. It was a misty and rainy morning and no one was out. They found their apartment a short walk away, only to find it… locked. They had been awake for 30 hours, the baby was crying, their phones were dead, and Talia was sick. They were so close, but were they ever going to make it?

Chapter 7: Don’t Land in Paris on a Sunday

After borrowing a merciful stranger’s cell phone, they had managed to get a hold of their landlord and were officially living in Paris. How do you feed yourself when it’s Sunday and all the stores are closed?

Chapter 8: Walking to the Louvre

On their first walk in Paris, Talia and Joe somehow managed to stumble upon Ponte des Arts bridge and the Louvre right at sunset. It was beautiful. But Talia’s stomach issues nearly managed to ruin everything.

Chapter 9: How to Make Friends with a Frenchman

During their two months in Paris, Joe and Talia managed to make a lot of friends—French, English, fellow Americans. However, they never were able to make friends with a Parisian. In fact, none of their friends had managed to make any Parisian friends either, even the ones who were French! Why was it so hard to make friends with a Parisian? Joe gets advice from a stranger, David Lebovitz, and Ernest Hemingway on how to make Parisian friends.

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Part Iv: ParIs, MInd If I tILt on Your WIndMILL?

Chapter 10: Choose an Adventure in Paris

What is a crowdsourced memoir? Before Joe and Talia left for Paris, hundreds of people had created challenges for them to complete while in the city. They picked the best ones and during their stay, tried to finish as many as they could. Things got a little crazy.

Chapter 11: So You Need Directions in Paris?

It would be putting it nicely to say Paris has a reputation amongst Americans for being a fairly unfriendly place. What do you do if you’re lost in Paris and need help? Here’s what Joe and Talia learned about asking for directions in French.

Chapter 12: Chillin’ with Jim Morrison at Pére Lachaise Cemetery

Pére Lachaise cemetery is one of the top attractions in Paris, and Joe and Talia had been challenged to make a tour of Paris’ most famous dead celebrities, including the lipstick covered tomb of Oscar Wilde, the grave of Hemingway’s mentor, Gertrude Stein (and her gay lover), and, of course, Jim Morrison’s fenced off tombstone, surrounded by morose, dreadlocked fans.

Chapter 13: Underneath Paris, Part I: Jean Val Jean’s Sewer

In Les Miserables, our hero Jean Val Jean saves his foster-daughter’s beau by dragging him through Paris’ sewer system. On a dare, Joe tracked his steps. And it was just as dark and smelly as you can imagine.

Chapter 14: Underneath Paris, Part II: The Empire of the Dead

The bones of six million people are buried in a series of caves below Paris known as the Catacombs. Above the entrance to the ossuary is carved, “Arrête! C’est ici l’empire de la Mort. Stop! Here lies the Empire of the Dead.” Joe was beginning to wonder why he signed up for this project.

Chapter 15: Underneath Paris, Part III: The Best Cave Restaurant in Paris

Two levels below ground is the best restaurant in a cave in Paris. The celebrated Spring restaurant, run by Daniel Rose. It wasn’t easy to get a reservation on short notice (or a baby sitter), but Talia and Joe got to experience the most expensive meal of their lives there. It was so good they had to come back a month later.

Chapter 16: The Open Air Markets and Tiny Kitchens of Paris

To satiate her love of fine cuisine and French cooking, Talia went on a tour of the open air

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markets with a private chef. Joe was the real winner, since he got to eat the leftovers.

Chapter 17: Painting in the Luxembourg Gardens

The challenge: to create a painting and then sell it on the street in Paris. To help, Joe enlisted artist and author Pauline Fraisse who took him to paint in the Luxembourg Gardens.

Chapter 18: French Onion Soup at Les Halles

Joe and Talia were challenged to eat french onion soup at the quintessential Parisian market, Les Halles. Unfortunately, Les Halles closed thirty years ago. They found the next best thing though.

Chapter 19: Shadow a Street Performer for €1,000

It sounded like the perfect adventure, shadow a street performer outside of Notre Dame for the day. Then, take over and perform in front of the crowd. Unfortunately, there actually aren’t as many street performers as the Hunchback of Notre Dame would lead us to believe, and the one that Joe found wanted €1,000 for the honor of interviewing him.

Chapter 20: Singing in the Rain Under the Arc de Triomphe

On one of their last days in Paris, Joe accepts the challenge to perform his best rendition of “Singing in the Rain” underneath the Arc de Triomphe. He even gets three backup dancers: Grandma, his mom, and Mars Bars!

Chapter 21: 10 Museums (plus 1)

The adventure was simple, go to ten museums and write about your feelings after visiting each one. It took all two months to do it, but Joe and Talia accomplished the challenge, throwing in an extra museum just for good measure.

Chapter 22: Rubbing Off Romance

Paris is the city of romance, and Talia and Joe were about to learn the secrets of love from the French.

Chapter 23: Paris from the Perspective of a One Year Old

“What does Paris look like from a one-year old’s perspective?” one reader wanted to know. Mars Bars shares his thoughts.

Chapter 24: The Lock that Broke Ponte des Artes’ Back

A few months after Joe and Talia left Paris, the Ponte des Artes bridge collapsed. The culprit was

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the millions of brass locks put there by tourists. Was it Joe and Talia’s love-lock that broke Ponte des Artes’ back?

Chapter 25: Hemingway’s Favorite Bar

It’s no surprise that Hemingway had a lot of bars that he liked in Paris. Joe walked in Hemingway’s footsteps and went to them.

Chapter 26: A Stranger in a Café

“Have a conversation with a stranger in a café,” read the challenge. With a cute infant, meeting strangers wasn’t hard at all.

Chapter 27: Underneath Paris, Part IV: My Night 180 Feet Below Paris

There are over 1,000 miles of caves, abandoned quarries and catacombs underneath the streets of Paris, and Giles Thomas has walked nearly every mile. Featured in National Geographic, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, Thomas is one of the top experts in the world on the caves of Paris, and by chance, Joe got his email address. This chapter is about Joe’s five hour journey into the illegal City of Darkness below Paris, and the unusual things he found there.

Part v: goodbYe, ParIs

Chapter 28: Suicide Watch

What started as just another adventure, shadow a French baker, turned into a suicide watch as a new friend overdosed on pills. This was the adventure Joe and Talia never signed up for, and yet what happened next was one of their best experiences in Paris.

Chapter 29: Goodbye, Paris

It was 1:30 am, and Joe had just gotten out of a rowdy writer’s group on the other side of town. The metro was closed, and so he rented a velib bike and rode through the city. ““Goodbye, Notre Dame,” he said as he rode past. “Goodbye, Louvre. Goodbye, Seine. Goodbye, Paris.”

Chapter 30: Grandma in Paris

On their last few days in Paris, Grandma arrived, along with her fiancé, and Joe’s parents. The resulting three days were exactly how you’d expect: ridiculous.

ePILogue: fLorence, roMe, and grandMa’s ruIned WeddIng

Paris was over. They were off to Florence and Rome, getting shown around Florence by Michaelangelo’s tenants’ great-granddaughter, watching the exploding cart on Easter, sipping

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machiattos in the most beautiful coffee shop in the world, getting drunk and spilling secrets with Grandma in Rome, and Grandma’s “ruined” wedding.

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The skulls and bones at Les Catacombs de Paris, where over six million unidentified Parisians are burried. Joe visited both the official and “illegal” Catacombs, deep in huge network of caves below Paris.

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Joe and Talia lived just five minutes from The Luxembourg Gardens, one of Paris’ most beautiful parks. Old men played crowded around chess tables and the sandboxes were once played in by “Bumby,” Ernest Hemingway’s oldest son, when the Hemingways lived in Paris. The Luxembourg Palace was once home to Marie de Medici, Queen of France, and is now the meeting place of the French Senate. More importantly, though, just nextdoor was Angelina’s, the site of the best hot chocolate in Paris.

Yum! Chocolate. This picture was taken at Europain, the premiere baking and candymaking exposition in Europe, which Joe got to visit acting as “the press.”

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saMPLe chaPter I

Blame Grandma for this entire thing.

In three months, Grandma is getting married in Florence. She’s 85 and she’s engaged to a 75

year old retired prison electrician.

The difference in their age once got me in trouble. For the first six years of their romantic

relationship, Grandma didn’t tell her boyfriend how old she was, and while he was aware that

she was older than him, Grandma kept the fact that she was babysitting when he was a baby a

carefully guarded secret.

And who can blame her?

As precarious as dating is in your eighties (your nursing home or mine?), why make it harder

by revealing you’re a decade older than your significant other.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think of the benefits of opacity when Grandma’s boyfriend cornered

me at party a few years ago.

“So Joe. Tell me,” he said, placing his hand comfortingly above my elbow, “how old is your

grandmother?”

I normally wouldn’t have the faintest idea—birthdays and ages are not my area—but the

heavens must have wanted to bring some transparency to Grandma’s relationship because the

answer came to me immediately.

“She’s 82, I believe.”

He nodded, smiled, and said nothing more. It wasn’t until Grandma came up to me red-

faced and yelling that I realized what a victory it was for him.

“Joe! You told him how old I am?!” she said. “That was supposed to be a secret!” She was

very annoyed.

“Grandma you’ve been dating like six years! How have you not told him?”

“Because it’s private. I can’t believe you!”

Grandma is quite wild. At my cousin’s graduation party, she found a bottle of Patron and

did shots with the twenty-somethings, then cornered my mother and regaled her with details

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about… well, I would tell you but my mother said I wasn’t allowed to.

Anyway, after years of “living in sin,” Grandma finally persuaded her boyfriend to make an

“honest-enough” woman out of her, and last year they got engaged. I don’t know if they ever

intended to get married, but when the prospect of going to Florence came up, we put a glass of

wine in Grandma’s hand and tried to convince her to make it a destination wedding.

“It’ll be fun. It doesn’t even have to be a real wedding. We’ll get a villa and Uncle Steve will

get ordained online and marry you himself. It’ll be a big party.”

Grandma loves a party. She said yes, of course.

We got a villa a few miles outside of the city—some Medici’s cousin’s old place, apparently—

and split it 43 ways with my extended family.

Talia, Mars Bars, and I are going to be sleeping in the gazebo, I understand.

It’s supposed to be beautiful and drafty and the advertisement says you can see the Duomo

from the second floor window.

We paid the deposit, bought the plane tickets, purchased a suitcase’s worth of Rick Steves’

guidebooks, and dreamed of gelato.

Florence, here we come.

Grandma, you better not get cold feet.

saMPLe chaPter II

When you spend three grand on plane tickets to Europe for your eighty-five year old

Grandma’s destination wedding, you might as well spread the cost out and make it a longer visit.

Also, since I don’t have a real job I thought, “Now is finally time to do the Tim Ferriss thing and

live abroad!”

Unfortunately, as hard as it is to believe, Talia isn’t always keen on the idea of traveling to

a foreign country with a bad exchange rate where we don’t know anyone with a one-year old

infant. Her reasoning baffles me.

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However, since I wanted my wife to agree to this crazy adventure, I chose Paris on the slim

probability that her favorite city would sway her to my side.

The secret to convincing your wife of a crazy idea is to let her convince herself.

“That’s a crazy idea!” she said when I first suggested Paris. “What about my sister’s wedding?

What about Mars Bars? What about my job? What about the potted plants?”

“The plants are dead. They adore babies into France. You can quit your job. And we’ll be

back in time for your sister’s wedding. Let’s go to Paris.”

“I just think it’s a bad plan. Why can’t we just move to Atlanta? This seems like just another

of your ideas.”

A few days later, though, we were at a party and she brought up Paris on her own.

“How long do you think you’ll stay in XXXXX?” someone asked about XXXXX, the

painfully small town at the foothills of the Appalachians where we live. Our town is most

famous for being the largest producer of chickens in the country. I love the trees and the hills,

but there’s only so many times you can get stuck behind a semi-truck towering with cages filled

with thousands of pitiful chickens heading to the slaughterhouse. Worse than the smell is the

knowledge you’re looking at tonight’s dinner.

“We’re actually planning on going to Paris for a few months,” said my darling wife. This

might have knocked me to the floor if it hadn’t already happened so many times in our happy

marriage.

“Paris? Why Paris?” someone asked.

“Well, our plants are dead. I want to quit my job. And my sister isn’t getting married until

June. Plus, I understand they adore babies in Paris.”

“Why not, then?” someone said encouragingly.

“Exactly,” I said, kissing my bride on the forehead. “Why not?”

Were we actually going to Paris?

Or did we concoct the whole plan as an excuse to brag at parties? Who knows? But the

one thing that saved our Paris trip from good intentions and no follow through was Grandma.

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Grandma’s nuptials were pending and somehow we had to make it to Europe.

There’s nothing like an octogenarian’s destination wedding to force your hand into a half-

baked excursion, and so in January less than two months before we had planned to depart, and

with much groaning, rolling in ashes, and tearing of robes, we finally purchased our plane tickets

and were immediately bankrupt.

Bankrupt, yes, but going to Paris.

We squealed in joy at the thought of Paris: the Louvre! Notre Dame! croissants! cafés!

thousands of cafés! and those frowning, seductive French! What an adventure! Then, we

remembered the state of our finances and fell into depression once more.

For better or worse, it was set: Florence by way of Paris. Bliss by way of Bankruptcy.

saMPLe chaPter III

When flying to Paris, do not drop your phone into the toilet moments before you leave

the house for the airport. Do not do this when flying to any country for that matter. There are

certainly other granules of wisdom you can shake from this story, but at the top of the list is to

keep your phone far away from any body of water. Especially, toilet water.

Of all the moments to drop your phone in the toilet, three minutes before you leave for the

airport to fly away on a two month trip to Europe is certainly the worst moment.

Of course, the best advice always comes after the fact. Just moments before we were

supposed to leave for the airport to Paris, Talia dropped her iPhone in the toilet. The phone had

been in her pocket and when she bent down to pick up Mars Bars, it slipped out and plopped

into the toilet bowl.

She shoved the baby into my arms while she retrieved her phone. When she came out to the

car her phone was in a bag filled with rice to soak up the toilet water.

“Good news,” she said, “at least we’ll have rice in Paris.”

I informed her that we certainly would not be having the rice her fecal-bacteria-covered

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phone was currently soaking in.

Later, after we picked up our friends Hope and Bethany who were seeing us off, she found

rice lodged in the charger slot.

“You should use longer grain rice next time,” I said. “Basmati maybe. Less likely to get

stuck.” (Okay, I didn’t actually say that, but I thought it was too funny to leave out. Plus, I’m sure

I did say something equally snarky.)

“Shut up.”

She attempted to dislodge the rice jammed in the phone by blowing hard on the slot. When

that didn’t work, she used the tip of a pen. Still no luck.

Finally, she got the bacteria-infested rice out with a bobby pin.

The drive to the airport was uneventful until we got about two miles from our exit and

traffic began to slow and an ambulance zoomed past us on the left shoulder. Then traffic really

stopped and we found out from our traffic iPhone app that there was a bad accident ahead of

us. Two miles to the airport and we’re going to get stuck for an hour as they clear the freeway?

May it never be! Instead, I veered the car into the next lane and cut across four lanes of

stopped traffic to get off the freeway.

“Where next?” I shouted to Talia, who was frantically pulling up directions on my phone

since hers was out of commission. “I have to turn now. Which way?!”

“Left!” she said. I went left.

“Now what?”

“Right!” she said. This was great. We would make it to the airport on time after all.

“Now where?”

“Straight!”

“Are you sure? It looks like a dead end.”

“Yes, that’s what the map says. Straight!”

Either South Atlanta is not very well mapped or my wife isn’t good at directions (granule of

wisdom #2: it’s always the map’s fault!).

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Straight we went, followed by a shout. Behind us, a security guard was waving us down.

Then, we found ourselves at a dead end of an industrial road.

(Granule of wisdom #3: Even when you want to say, “I told you it wasn’t straight,” don’t

say, “I told you it wasn’t straight.” Instead say, “There’s no one I’d rather get lost with than you,

honey.” And mean it.)

I turned around and drove back toward the security guard who was looking at us like we

were crazy.

“Sorry! We’re lost,” said Talia. “We’re trying to get to the airport.”

“The airport?!” she said, and looked to be thinking, “Then what the f*^& are you doing

here?” She had a round face and her forehead was covered by a black beanie.

“Yeah. 85 is blocked,” I said. “There’s an accident.”

“Can you give us directions?” said Talia. The woman’s expression shifted to a stern,

contemplating look, which lasted several long seconds, long enough for us to notice the three

young men with dreads and baggy clothes and hoodies and to realize we were in the worst part

of town and to wish we hadn’t gotten off the freeway at all.

Then, like a breaking wave of inspiration, our new friend’s expression became conspiratorial.

“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do,” she said as if she was letting us in on a secret to untold

wealth and happiness.

I honestly have no idea what directions she gave. I couldn’t understand a word of it, she

spoke with such a thick drawl, but apparently they were correct because Bethany repeated them

back to me as I drove and we did end up making it to the airport.

We were at the airport! Next stop, Paris! Hope gave us a giant, humiliating balloon that said,

“Bon voyage! We’ll miss you!” and made us walk through the airport with it (I popped it and

threw it away as soon as I could—sorry Hope). We checked into our flight, made it through

security, and then headed for our airline’s VIP lounge.

Talia, who has a great eye for deals for luxury experiences, had found tickets to the VIP

lounge on eBay for $15 each, a good deal considering we got lunch and two drinks for free and

22


Mars Bars got to crawl around on the outdoor terrace and look at the airplanes.

“We should go soon,” said Talia.

“We’ll be fine,” I said. “Our flight doesn’t leave for another hour and a half.”

I was changing Mars Bars’ diaper in the bathroom when I heard something over the

intercom that almost ruined our day, if not the entire trip.

“Last call for flight 1098 to Paris. All passengers of flight 1098 to Paris please head to Gate

F10.”

“S*&t.” I said (earmuffs, Mars Bars).

(Granule of wisdom #4: You really shouldn’t cuss around your child, but if you do, just

make sure to do it before he’s a year old. It doesn’t count then.)

I grabbed Mars Bars and we speed walked for the gate. There was Talia waiting for me, a

look of terror upon her face.

“You were right,” I said.

Talia just looked at me. She was clearly following granule of wisdom #3. (Where do you

think I learned them?)

We speed walked out of the club and down the stairs and then ran the last of the way to the

gate, with Mars Bars bouncing from my navel to my ears, and Talia with her arms full of strollers

and diaper bags and suitcases.

“Buntings,” said the gate attendant.

“Yes! Are we too late?”

“No, you just made it.”

“Thank God!”

We boarded the plane and found out we had bulkhead seating and Mars Bars would have

his own little bed. Thank you sweet Jesus! The people sitting next to us looked at our baby with

alarm—“So this is what I have to look forward to for the next eight hours?” Which proved to be

needless.

We sat down breathlessly, they closed the plane’s doors, and Mars Bars immediately fell

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asleep.

Bon voyage! We’ll message you when we get to Paris. But not from Talia’s phone. Because

she dropped it in the toilet.

saMPLe chaPter Iv

It was a sunny spring morning and we walked through the Luxembourg Gardens and down

Rue Saint Michel on the way to the Catacombs. Caroline was visiting from the States, and when

we got to the entrance to Les Catacombes des Paris, I left her in line to check the information

booth for the cost of tickets and to see if there were any announcements. The tickets were

reasonably priced, but I found a innocent looking printed paper that said the following:

“Due to security problems, half of the ossuary is closed today. We are sorry for the

inconvenience.”

Inconvenience? You should say, “Sorry for the crime against humanity.” You have stolen

half of the empire of the dead from us. And you expect us to say, “We forgive you. It’s just a

little inconvenience?”

Imagine the meters and meters of bones that you are depriving the living of, the cubits of

clavicles, the metric tons of skulls. Paris, you call yourself a democracy? What rights do the

people have if not to their own dead?

I returned to the back of the line barely containing my rage. But then Caroline went to Paul’s

down the block and brought back two croissants aux amandes (almond croissants!), and the

soft crispiness of the pastry, the layered sweetness of the filling, the crunch of the thinly sliced

almonds on top, and the blissful sensations they produced brought me once again under the

subjugation of the City of Paris.

Paris, I love you, even though you deny me the dead.

The line to the crypts was long, and as we waited, we heard languages from a dozen different

countries. There were Germans! Brits! Americans! Italians! All waiting in line to see the bones of

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six million of Paris’ dead.

The one group not in attendance, though, were those from the continent of Asia. Neither

Indian nor Chinese nor Japanese tourists were present, people groups that generally appear in

force in the City of Light but were surprisingly absent to the City of Darkness.

Perhaps their absence could be explained by the fact that these were not their dead,

these would not be their ancestors to whom they would be paying their respects. Or perhaps

superstition or religious sensibility warded them away from the remnants of death. On the other

hand, perhaps it was something far less deep, simply the fact that they don’t have the Bollywood,

Shanghai, or Tokyo equivalent to the Indiana Jones’ movies to heighten their appreciation for the

netherworlds of civilization.

Whatever the explanation, they were missing a rare opportunity to descend into the crypt

and take selfies with skulls to then post on Facebook later, saying, “Hey look at this! This is me

in 500 years!”

Finally, it was our turn to go down into the darkness. We began to walk down the spiral

staircase... one, two, three... eleven... eighteen, I lost count at 23 steps. I later read that there are

only 132 steps that take you down a measly 66 feet and felt embarrassed with myself, but at the

time I wondered if the staircase would ever end.

We began walking through the dark quarries toward the ossuary. There are hundreds of

miles of caves below Paris, most of which are ancient limestone quarries dug by earlier residents

of Paris—from the Romans to Louis XVI. The tan stone blocks of the Louvre, Notre Dame,

and most of the other buildings of Paris were taken from these pits.

Unfortunately, when you have gaping holes deep below the earth, sometimes they cave in.

The first cave in occurred in 1774, and they continued every twenty years or so for centuries.

How would you like to be eating dinner with your family in 18th century Paris when your

house collapses below you, burying you and your children alive?

The caves below Paris still exist today. All entrances within the City of Paris have been

sealed by the police, but every once in a while, a landlord will be renovating and break into some

25


forgotten cave below the city.

The way to the ossuary is long and twisting. Barred iron gates block your way to offshoot

caves and if you shine your flashlight through the gates you can’t see the end of the tunnel. The

floor is covered with pebbles and limestone dust coats your shoes. You walk along, feeling all but

alone, until some Italian tourist comes hustling from behind and passes you.

Time goes slowly below ground, and it feels like several hours before you stumble upon a

sculpture carved out of the rock. The sculptures were by a quarryman named Décure, who in

the 18th century carved them after his shifts.

The sculpture in the image above is of the prison at Port-Mahon in Spain where he was held

captive by the English after fighting for Louis XV. The whole sculpture was only about two feet

high, but the detail is stunning, and of course, it’s a strange surprise to find art like this in the

catacombs.

Décure himself fell victim to his own vanity. While carving a staircase to allow people to see

his art, he caused the cave in that killed him.

We walked on, following a black line painted on crudely on the ceiling as a guide, the black

line to death’s home.

Finally, we reached the ossuary. The sign above the door says, “Come no further! You are

entering the Empire of the Dead.” You step through the portal.

There were bones on either side. The walls were lined with bones and if you shine a light to

the back of the cave you could see splintered bones as far back as 28 meters.

“Can you actually believe what you’re seeing?” said a British woman to her young son.

“Yeah, mum, I can.”

“I can’t.”

“Dead boooones,” he said with glee. Then later, “There are 99 of these tracts!”

A girl said, pointing to a skull that was cracked and turned upside down, half-scared, half-

thrilled, “Oh my GOD, someone died in the most horrible way!”

“How so?”

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“Upside down!”

Some of the skulls get caked in the sediment in the quarry. I saw a few covered in small

crystals that sparkled in the occasional light. One skull on the corner of a lower level has bullet

holes in the back of the head. An execution, we wonder?

The crypt doesn’t smell like decay or death. To me, it smelled like floral perfume, but that

may have been the American woman walking in front of me.

Finally, we follow the black line out of the ossuary, down the abandoned quarries and to the

spiral staircase leading back to the City of Light. We are in a rush to get back to the surface and

away from all these skulls, but as soon as we make it onto the staircase, we begin to slow, our

quads begin to burn, our breath comes slow.

It’s easy to descend into the land of the dead but coming back to life is a lot of work!

The staircase spirals on forever. I lose track of how many steps I’ve taken and the boy

behind me who was annoyingly counting each step has lost his breath and taken a break. I trudge

on, alone, silently. And then, I am no longer in a stone encased tomb but a drywall room, lit by

wonderfully boring halogen lamps. The door is open and Paris is just outside. I exit and breath in

the air... a lot of air because I’m pretty out of breath from the climb, and when we leave, I don’t

look back at the catacombs or think of the darkness or death anymore for the rest of the day.

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