Commemorating 9/11

Tom and I were married on August 18, 2001 but didn't leave for our honeymoon until September 9, 2001. We arrived in Paris on September 10, the day before 9/11. Below is what I wrote about that time.

Honeymoon Itinerary

Leave Seattle Sunday, September 9, Arrive Paris, France, Monday morning September 10.

Taxi in from DeGaulle Airport in traffic arriving at our hotel on the Seine -- the Hotel Quai du Voltaire -- to find rooms the size of closets, but a fine view from our window of the Louvre and the Seine. Unable to check in, we begin on foot to tour the city -- eating wonderful baguettes of ham and pate and sharing a prune creme brulee tart; buying gold eye shadow and bright red lipstick and nail polish; dinner at a French restaurant we thought we had discovered on the Left Bank only to be joined by Americans. We also manage our first day to walk to the Eiffel Tower, the huge Museum of Anthropology and Archeology from where we have a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower, before heading to the hotel to shower and go to dinner.

September 11, a day that began with hope and excitement for our first full day in Paris. Eating breakfast on the Isle Louis with an American photographer and [an] actress, visiting the Les Vosges square and hotel and settling in for lunch at a curbside restaurant; heading for the garment district which is in the old Jewish Quarters and passing by a television airing the fateful terrorist attacks as they happened on the World Trade Center towers. The crowd gathering in stunned silence, then tears.

We spent the next 6 hours trying to contact our four children. First Peter with an Internet card and computer in a bar, then phone calls to Cherise, Kelly and Peter [Neu]. Finally connecting with Sally Neu and then Kelly from our perch in St. Germaine. Then collapsing in relief to find that Peter [Neu] had gotten to the airport that morning to fly from Seattle to Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh to Paris but when he arrived shortly aft 6:00 a.m. found that his plane and all planes had been grounded because of a terrorist attack.

We eat dinner at a Moule (mussels) restaurant and try to make sense of it all. We can't sleep that night, going over the day's events. Turning them slowly in our mind. We can't comprehend the incomprehensible. We sleep until noon. Planes are not flying to the US for fear of attacks and we are in Europe. We decide the only thing we can do is proceed with our vacation itinerary as we have breakfast at lunchtime at a restaurant near the Rodin Museum. We visit the museum and meet an American couple from Connecticut who are equally stunned -- in fact, Americans we meet everywhere are stunned and muted. We talk about their love of Paris. How they met in Paris 8 years ago, flew home and got married, and returned for 3 months of honeymoon exchanging their home for one in Paris. They are meeting another couple on a canal two hours south of Paris for a two-week barge trip. By barge you can go across Europe we find.

We walk to Napoleon's tomb.

That night we eat at a restaurant in the lively Latin Quarter sitting next to an American girl studying there and living a block away and two Australians on a 5-week trip through France and Greece. They're stockbrokers and talk with us about the terrorist attacks at length -- telling us that colleagues of theirs narrowly missed being there at the time of the attacks. Everyone it seems feels close to the tragedy, with so many people working in the buildings, from every country, the inhuman act affects us all.

Collectively, Europe mourns. People all express their sorrow to us. It helps. Meanwhile, so many of us are in Europe -- Christy, Jim and Jeff Caldwell, Peter Gaffney, ourselves and then, we find, Peter Neu who flies out a week later to Berlin.

On this trip we go on to Tours (where we experience a three-minute moment of silence and church bells ring throughout the city to honor those who died in the terrorist attacks), Cognac, St. Cyprien, Monaco, Massa Rossa (where my grandfather was born), Lucca (and torta verdura), Ponte a Moriano (where we visit the relatives), Florence (where we visit Tony and Marghi), Stressa, and London. We never completely rest easy but we find respite in each other and the calm surroundings of the French and Italian countryside.