Sacre-Couer and I go way back. On my first solo Europe trip in 1988 I sat out on the grass with two beautiful Israeli girls. They were unsuccessfully trying to explain the word Chutzpah when a very stern policeman started yelling at us. Efrat started speaking Hebrew and pretending not to understand, but the officer pointed at the multi-lingual Stay Off The Grass sign. Pnina soothingly told him that we would of course get off his precious grass, but could he please take our picture first. “That”, she smiled at me, as we left the bewildered officer and proceeded to break into the off-limits catacombs, “is chutzpah.” 

Sadly, I never mustered the chutzpah to kiss Pnina, but romance was surely more in the air as I brought my new bride here 12 years later. We’d just packed up our love-nest condo in Zambia, stopped by Central African Republic and Ivory Coast to facilitate my final Habitat for Humanity workshops, and were heading to Texas to start the next phase of our life. Unfortunately, 47 tumba fly larvae had hitched a ride to the promised land in Sarah’s left buttocks, rendering her more miserable than kissable. (More mopey than gropey? AI suggests: More raving than craving, more burning than yearning, more whining than pining. I certainly would have liked less aching and more quaking).

Just over a year ago, we created an overnight layover that was a delicious lesson in Slow Movement. We chose one neighbourhood to sink into, so Sacre Coeur did not beckon.

This time around everything is in place. We’ve napped away a bit of the red-eye flight jetlag in our cosy "pied-à-terre" (literally, "foot on the ground") apartment that is traditionally a secondary residence for coming into the big city for business or, um, pleasure. We’ve wandered up the cobblestone alleys and eclectic galleries of the Montmartre arts district. Warmed up over hot chocolate in the ecclectic Chez Gaston Leroux café, filled with paraphernalia from Phantom of the Opera which the owner’s great-great-grandfather wrote.

At last - 4th time lucky - we embrace at the Emily in Paris film set, aka Sacre-Couer. The lights of Paris spread out below us through the light rain. It doesn’t matter how old we become, or how many times we come here, Paris never gets old, and is always for lovers.