Bon anée, Paris, 2004

Kim and I drove from Nijmegen, The Netherlands to Paris for New Year's Eve, 2003.

My co-worker Thanh loaned me his car—it was his suggestion.

We'd planned to go through Lille, directly into Paris the night before. With a late start, we decided to go to Brussels instead, and stay the night there.

We stayed in the car in downtown Paris on New Year's Eve, and came back the "planned" route, stopping for a cup of coffee in Lille on our way back to Nijmegen. We didn't even bring a map. When we went to Wil's place in Arnhem to bring a computer to her and to leave punkie the Guinnea pig, Wil gave us an atlas....

I don't know why we were in Brussels. We had planned to go through Antwerp, toward Lille.

Oh, I remember. We'd wondered if we wanted to stay in Brussels instead of pressing on toward Paris.... It was New Year's Eve, and the idea of trying to book a room in Paris seemed ridiculous. Maybe that wasn't true, but that seemed logical to us. So we didn't even try....