So far, it has not been the easiest of trips. Not long after I landed in Dallas a couple of weeks ago, I got sick. Then my computer froze. Wouldn’t even do the beach ball. But the 20-something on other end of the 1-800-helpy Mac desk assured me that it was probably some sort of start-up glitch, so I worried not. The next day, I toted my little MacBook to the closest Apple store, hopped on a bar stool, and Genius Alex told me matter-of-factly that it wasn’t a start-up issue at all — it was my hard drive. It had crashed.

X and I were killing time the other night, waiting for the pizza place in Passy to open at 7 for dinner, and we came across Aux Merveilleux de Fred, a little shop on rue de l’Announciation selling meringues. Meringues in four different sizes, from small, individual ones to meringue “cakes” that feed eight.

When I saw the recent story by Oliver Strand in The New York Times about the awful coffee in Paris — true, it’s often burned, weak, tasteless, or all three — I sat up in my chair, with my medicore cup of morning Joe and took note. He said that a new café near Pigalle called Le Bal had the best coffee in town, so I did a quick Google map search, realized that it was only a few metro stops away, and when X came home from walking Rosedog, off we went.