No 243: the Ritz Paris

I love pretty things, like this photo from Dita von Teese's Twitter, featuring her post-show libation at the Hemingway Bar at the Ritz Paris. It immediately returned me to the summer we spent in France, and my father's 46th birthday, which was just days after my sweet 16. I spent the whole trip grousing that my parents were so continental that we had to spend four weeks in France instead of just throwing me a sweet 16 party like everyone else; what a pain in the ass I was. For my birthday, there was a beautiful dinner on the lawn of a chateau, and all the duck and Bordeaux anyone could hope for. For my father's birthday, we had dinner at Buddha Bar, drove underneath the Eiffel Tower in a taxi piloted by a manical Persian man and enjoyed stiff drinks at the Hemingway Bar, with the exception of my dad, who insisted on a blue drink which was on fire.

Isn't it amazing what a photograph can invoke? I can't wait to get back to the Ritz; I'll order one perfect French 75 and think, "Oh, how lucky I am."