Paris Journal 1992 Final Day
During the month of January 2026, I revisited the pages of a journal that I kept in late October 1992 while traveling with Kit on my first trip to Paris. And each Friday I’ve shared our adventures on the streets of Paris with you in my weekly blogs. It’s now February as I recount memories of our last day in Paris during the week of October 17-24, 1992.
Our final day in Paris began at the Musée du Louvres. Much of our time was spent in the wing where we encountered the Grande Galerie du Louvre. On this first trip, there simply wasn’t time to see it all because of course that is impossible. The space was as we found it on a postcard I affixed in my journal. We stepped into a vast room lined with enormous canvases, sat on benches provided for viewing, and allowed ourselves to become part of the scene. We would be back someday we told ourselves, and each time would visit different wings of the museum. But being our final day to explore the city, there was still so much more of Paris yet to see.
As we left the Louvre, it was raining lightly and cool. There was the need to stop at a café as our feet were begging for a rest and we were feeling a bit pensive. Paris was so compelling, so visually exciting, and I did not want to leave before seeing it all. So like Bonaparte, onward we marched.
For the remainder of that day, we were in new territory, navigating streets that change names on every corner. Following a map that I had thankfully tucked into my shoulder bag along with my camera, we headed to the Île Saint Louis and Pont Marie and followed an uphill route that took us up to the Panthéon. Before long we were surrounded by old city walls in Montparnasse.
We were in the Latin Quarter of Paris==a center of poetry and art—with bookstores, cafés and corners where university students collect before and after classes. In the 1920s and 30s such artists and writers as Picasso, Hemingway, Cocteau, Giacometti, Matisse, and Modigliani hung out in the neighborhood’s local bars, cafés, and cabarets. Near La Sorbonne—seat of the University of Paris established in 1253—I took black and white photographs of old brick walls and wooden doors that filled me with a sense of time writ large.
Then it was marche, marche, marche for we still had le tombeau de Napoléon at Musée de l’Armée and les Jardins de Luxembourg to visit before walking back to our apartment on Rue Saintonge in the Marais neighborhood. Perhaps because it was a cloudy day, the black and white photographs I took that afternoon captured a nostalgic Paris I have never forgotten. So old, so grand, so majestic and regal. Powerful to behold. For me, autumn in Paris will forever be tied to those images, along with all of the images I listed in the back of my Paris journal that October week in 1992.
[Postscript: Like Claude Monet and his wife Alice, I left Paris with a recipe to try out in my kitchen back home. It’s a recipe for Crème Brulée from the Patisserie of Christian Pottier, Rue de Rivoli, Paris 4th. Bon appétit dear Readers. Thank you for taking this trip back to Paris with me over the past month.]