writing travel

Or up close and very personal, if you wish...

My First Time in Paris by Lanora Mueller

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Originally uploaded by WritingTravel.com

An unexpectedly creepy visitor strolls through the garden of the Musee du Moyen Age in Paris.

This mausoleum in Pere Lachaise cemetery is home to numerous web creating insects or arachnids as well as to its intended occupants. The entire structure is covered with cobwebs of various sizes. These on a bas relief portrait are particularly creepy.

Visit DeliciousBaby for more Photo Friday pix!

I'm a bit late to the Blogapalooza party being sponsored today by Angela Nickerson of Just Go!.

I meant to write up a blog post in advance and schedule it to appear early this morning. That was until I got involved in the seriously scary business of drinking a full 2 liters of GoLytely solution in preparation for the colonoscopy and upper GI endoscopy I had scheduled with my gastroenterologist this morning.

I want to reassure you all that the procedure itself was easy and quick. After just half an hour under the anesthetic, I woke up thinking I'd been asleep for hours and dreaming of last week's trip to Paris. Ten minutes later, I was up in a chair drinking coffee, eating Rice Krispy Treats, and viewing the lovely full-color photos of my innards the doc gave me for my scrapbook.

I'd put off these procedures for a number of years despite having lost two first cousins to midlife colon and stomach cancers. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I was afraid to schedule them. Fear of the unknown, perhaps? In truth, there really was nothing to fear.

The discharge instructions forbade me from driving, operating heavy machinery, or using power tools for the next 24 hours. Perhaps this ban should have included blogging.

So, before the lingering effects of the anesthesia cause me to write some truly scary and long-winded philosophical treatise on fear as it relates to travel, or travel as it relates to fear, I encourage you to visit Just Go!'s Blogapalooza, What a Strange Trip It's Been and sample more of the participating blogs.

Please remember to leave a comment for your chance at one of the cool goodie bags Angela is giving away to celebrate the occasion. Oh, and please tell Angela I sent you.

Woo hoo!

Writing Travel's first attendance at a blogapalooza is coming up this Wednesday.

Thanks to Angela Nickerson of Just Go for the invitation.

• Theme: What a Strange Trip It's Been
• When: October 29
• Where: Just Go! ( http://aknickerson.blogspot.com)

On the flight from CDG to ORD yesterday, a young woman is traveling with four small children, one a lap infant under two. She's in the middle seat two rows behind me, two of her kids are together in the row between, and another is in the middle seat next to me. He is maybe three years old and terrified, speaks only French. The baby had begun crying before they got through security and is still wailing, as he did throughout most of the eight-and-a-half hour trip.

I decide the little guy next to me needs his mother, so I offer to change seats with her. Of course, the two guys on either side of her and the crying baby are profusely thankful.

Introducing ourselves, I learn the man on my left is from Honduras. He has been living in Paris for 5 or 6 years with his French wife and children and is on his way home to Honduras. I ask what he does in Paris. He's a musical director, and he is going to Honduras to conduct an orchestra there.

Major flux in the whims of chance: when I was in Kansas City last month, I met and photographed Anton Krutz, a luthier whose shop is called K.C. Strings. Anton builds string instruments for musicians all over the world, and the day I visited his shop he was expecting the director of the Honduran symphony to arrive within a day or two to audition a full complement of stringed instruments for his orchestra. This would give the orchestra a rare, unified sound, making it perhaps the only orchestra in the world with all its strings of the same provenance.

I had meant to find out more about the outcome of the deal but hadn't yet done so, distracted by preparations for my last-minute trip to Paris.

Ahh, I asked my seatmate, did the Honduran symphony just receive all new stringed instruments from a shop called K.C. Strings in Kansas City?

It turns out that my seatmate, Jorge Luis Banegas, is going to Honduras for three weeks to conduct this same symphony, and it's his friend whom he is meeting in Honduras who was shopping for the instruments. How thrilling to be able to tell him I have a few hundred images of the master luthier and the atelier in Kansas where the instruments were produced.

I'm looking forward with excitement to learning more about Maestro Banegas's upcoming concerts.

Kansas City, Paris, music