Last  June was my 63^rd birthday, the age of my mother when she died. Thinking about about how much time I’ve got left and how I want to spend it, fueled this particular  trip.

There I was on the couch, Googling St.Petersburg, wondering if my deep itch to visit the Hermitage was serious enough to deal with what it would require of me in terms of Russian bureaucracy, expense, and stamina.  One thought led to another, and I recalled wistfully how I’d wanted to spend a month in the Louvre. It is to this painter, what the Vatican is to a nun, the epicenter of what my world spins around.

In my daydream, I’d rent an apartment close enough to walk. In the morning I’d stroll along the Seine, my sketchbook in my bag, and when the guards invited me to leave at the end of the day, I’d limp back, gorged on art, a baguette under my arm.

True, I am not a huge fan of Parisians – they are a little on the cranky, hyper-caffeinated side, like most striving citizens in major international cities – but compared to the strain of putting together a trip to Russia, no big deal.

At that moment, in one of those serendipitous, coincidental nudges from fate, my husband brought in the mail and dropped a postcard  on my lap that read  “Would you like to have your own home in Paris for a week, a month or…”

The idea caught fire right away. I did the math on the rental, versus the B&Bs I usually choose. I clocked the distance to the Louvre both on foot and by Metro.  I think that’s the travel equivalent of mentally placing your furniture in rooms when you go house-hunting.

An intense week followed – deciding on dates, the inclusion of Amsterdam/ the Rjiksmuseum, shopping flights looking for the best possible combination of Skymiles and $$, culminating in an April Fool’s departure and May 1 return.

Next post – traveling in the age of apps.

What they call pre-production in the film biz is my favorite part of getting ready for a trip. The life-long-library-loving journalist quadrant of my brain adores research. This is research plus anticipation. What’s not to love?

My modus operandi is to spend a couple of days comparing flights for optimal  comfort /minimal expense, and scour TripAdvisor.com for potential accommodations, with a strong preference for B&Bs. Once I pull the trigger on the rooms and flights, I drill down: scan travel sites, compare guide books, watch travel shows, read novels set in the destination city, follow travel blogs, create a music playlist, Google map my way from where I’m staying to museums and other attractions. From that information, I craft detailed daily itineraries, with rain versus shine options. It’s total immersion and a tad obsessive. Okay, more than a tad.

One of the great pleasures of planning the trip is Imagining my adventure in detail. A novelist might call it world building. Nothing is sweeter… until I go a little crazy from trying to anticipate every possible variable and slide into the delusion that I can control said variables. That way lies misery. Here’s the deal I make with myself. I get to plan and prepare and visualize all I want, but then I get out of the results business. Accept absolutely that I cannot control the outcome. What I can influence, is my attitude. As Rick Steves famously suggests, “If things are not to your liking, change your liking.”

Which brings me to the apps. As part of my research, I wanted to track down books about the Louvre. After much fumbling around in the library, Barnes & Noble and online, I wised up. I realized I was looking on the wrong shelf, so to speak. I hit paydirt in the app store.

I downloaded two iPad/iPhone app guides to the Louvre, https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/louvre-audioguide/id526191255?mt=8  and two to the recently renovated and expanded Rijksmuseum. The museum guides are free, by the way – go to the museum websites or straight to iTunes. HD images of gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous art. If you have an ipad, check it out.

I opted to set up a My Louvre account on the museums website, as well as sign up for e-newletters from the Rijks. I’ve become a friend of the Louvre, Oui, je suis un card-carrying ami des Louvre.  Not only does that put my money where my heart is, it entitles me to free entry to the museum for a year.

Last summer as I blew out my 63 birthday candles, I decided to figure out, STAT, what I wanted to do in the time I have left. I need to front load the next ten years with any adventures that require good health and working vision. Or kiss them goodbye. Not taking aging into account is a decision too.

I’ve been saying for the last decade, ‘I’m going while my knees can still bend and my eyes can still see.” I was kind of kidding. Not any more. But why Paris?

In 2007 I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art for five uninterrupted days, with an afternoon detour to the Frick. It was a delicious experience, a painter’s dream. I had the time of my life. I left Manhattan on fire with the idea of spending a month at the Louvre. But life got in the way, the dream languished and eventually faded. Whenever my desire to immerse myself in the Louvre surfaced, I’d think of all the reasons it was not a good idea. The expense, my lack of French, the debilitating stress of a transcontinental flight, the challenge of finding a dogsitter, the physical demands of walking all day, and the risks of traveling solo while both elderly and female.

Plus, Paris and I have a complicated relationship. I lived there in the early seventies, a young and heedless hippie-turned-model. I see Paris as imperious, temperamental, supremely egotistical, casually mendacious and a oui bit on the cynical side. And yet, she is heartbreakingly beautiful and brave. I left her for London. I’ve made a few visits in the subsequent decades and we reached a détente, but we are both wary.

What turned me around was reading a throwaway line of a minor character in a romance novel, who says she wants to see Paris once again before she dies. Mind you, she is robust, bossy woman, who makes this statement to get her own way.

It resonated. What I realized is it doesn’t matter whether or not the trip is all I want it to be.  I don’t want to look back in ten years and think, I wish I had gone, but I let my doubts and fears stop me. I may or may not love the experience that awaits me, but I will for sure regret not making this trip. By the act of going, it’s already a win.

I cast a wide net when it comes to learning about Paris. History, novels, memoir, essay, blog and facebook posts – they all have their uses.  I use paper, ipod and e-book and app. It’s as much about ambiance as education. Let the reading begin.

The Sweet Life in Paris, by blogger and pastry chef David Lebovitz, http://www.davidlebovitz.com. Read via ebook.  Honest and funny, plus recipes. Go to his blog for top ten delicious things to eat in Paris. I just burned two hours reading his experiences in restaurants and checking their proximity to my apartment via Google Maps. Downloading his puff pastry app right now.

Paris In Love, a memoir by Eloisa James. Read via ebook. She writes historical romances. Swoon. But she’s also Mary Bly, a Shakespeare professor at Fordham University with degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and Yale, so smart, right? She and her professor husband took sabbaticals, sold their house, sold their cars, uprooted their kids and ran away to live in Paris for a year. This is an abbreviated account of that year, partially salvaged from her blog and Facebook posts. I enjoyed it immensely.

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris, by John Baxter, is the kind of off-kilter approach I find engaging.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/book-review-the-most-beautiful-walk-in-the-world/2011/05/25/gIQARsJJhI_story.html

Listening, on and off, to an audiobook of David McCullough’s The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. It’s a Ken Burns-esque experience.

Novels in the TBR section of my ebook –

The Good Thief’s Guide to Paris by Chris Ewan http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3173811-the-good-thief-s-guide-to-paris

The Chocolate Kiss, by Laura Florand http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15806994-the-chocolate-kiss

The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris, by Jenny Colgan http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16079967-the-loveliest-chocolate-shop-in-paris

Back to the pleasure of the iPod, I downloaded a couple of classics, The Hunchback of Notre–Dame  by Victor Hugo, and Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. I’ve read them in my distant past, and wanted to listen to them while I walked miles at the gym, training for the rigors of walking ten hours a day in Paris.

Paris, The Novel, by Edward Rutherfurd, is an epic tale. From what I’ve heard so far,  I suspect I will enjoy it more after my visit than before. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15786792-paris

A traditional guide ebook I expect will be referred to often after I arrive, Rick Steves Paris 2013. It’s informative, no-nonsense, and lacks all pretension. Hallelulia. http://www.amazon.com/Rick-Steves-Paris-2013/dp/1612383815

Pre-ordered for my ebook – The Food Lover’s Guide to Paris by Patricia Wells.

A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway’s memoir of Paris.  I read in 1973, when I lived in a garret in Paris. It ruined me for the rest of his work – I much prefer it to his novels – and stamped Paris in my mind forever as an epicenter of writers and artists.

I love the header I’m using, with permission from Marshall. Here’s a link to the eponymous song Make Time,  http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X9TAr6WjzMA

My itinerary for three weeks in Paris is done. Museums, street markets, churches, parks, and pâtisseries; color-coded, rain/shine options, and custom Google-mapped.

I’d have four weeks done if I wasn’t so distracted by the Louvre’s website. http://musee.louvre.fr/oal/scribe/indexEN.html. Checking out  A Closer Look (videos of a specific work discussed in  a historical and artistic context) and the various Louvre Trails  (themed ninety minute audio tours) was fascinating. I selected a few Trails (Mighty Aphrodite, Alexander the Great, Lion Hunt, In Search Of Ideal Beauty) to plug in, though I reserve the right to turn left into any open door.

On days the street markets are open, I added churches and parks that are nearby. Street markets and parks are fair weather options only. It can be chilly,  but not wet or bitter cold – that’s under 45 degrees for this southern woman.

My detailed agenda is not set in stone. It’s not a schedule, it’s more like a list of tempting possibilities I can follow or ignore, depending upon my whim. That’s one of the beauties of solo travel. You can pick up the pace or slack off at will. In a city like Paris, where there are more wonderful things to do than there are hours in the day, my itinerary serves more as a filter than a must see/do list.

Now, about apps. Tripadvisor’s City Guides app https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tripadvisor-offline-city-guides/id480066121?mt=8 is free, has a great make your own map option and directions that guide you from where your feet are to the venue, plus those helpful crowd-sourced ratings. And it’s free. Love me some free.

Uber  https://www.uber.com/https://www.uber.com/ will get a work out, unless the Parisian cabbies manage to ban it between now and when I arrive. Fly Delta http://www.delta.com/content/www/en_US/mobile.html  because when you need flight info, you really need it.

I have two food centric apps, because who doesn’t need high quality caffeine and sugar?  Paris Pastry  http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2011/11/paris-pastry-app/  is curated by pastry chef David Lebovitz, and Paris Cafes https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paris-cafes/id441859940?mt=8  is very Yelp-esque.

A Paris Metro app will come in handy, and the filter in the Ulmon Paris http://www.ulmon.com/ will obligingly show you the location of everything from monuments to pharmacies.

I’m going to try out the Cities Talking tour http://www.citiestalking.com/cities/paris/, as I have always loved the Venice/Rome/Paris Walks audio guides by Sonia Landes. I’d rather listen and look around than squint at a book while I stumble down the street.  Rick Steves Audio Europe, http://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/audio/audio-europe makes the cut for his reliable, salt of the earth perspective.

I downloaded all three of the official Louvre guides to the museum, http://www.louvre.fr/en/louvre-audio-guide-app though I will probably also rent an audio guide there. And of the four translation apps I checked out, I like Google Translate best https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-translate/id414706506?mt=8 It has worked reliably, will say your phrase in mellifluous tones, and show it on screen, bumped up to large font, if need be.