For the first time in my life I’ve met my guardian angel in the flesh. If I must, let me briefly describe him to you. Oh, I’d say he’s about 65-ish with silvered hair, chestnut eyes, a broad nose, wrinkly smile, wearing a cinnamon woolen jacket and a smart hat lightened by years of travel (apparently he was in Santiago earlier this morning --- perhaps guiding weary lost souls like Kris and I?). As we rode the Roissy, I didn’t even notice he’d boarded the coach in the first place. As our bus mosied on down to the center of Paris, he pointed out touristy landmarks such as the Sacre Couer that stood triumphantly atop a hill. After 45 minutes of transit, we reached our destination, the Paris Opera House, a haunt made famous by Gaston Leroux.

Our guide the wayfarer piloted our route. With him in the lead, Kris and I interlaced through foreign streets, leviathan Samsonite luggage ala monster wheels in tow. HA. Upon reaching the Metro station’s entrance, our jaws dropped an Eiffel Tower’s stretch when we saw what lay ahead of us --- STAIRS? After pulling a GI Jane, we managed to haul the burgeoning beasts down two flights of concrete steps one bombastic descent at a time. Buying "un carte orange" set of tokens, we then passed through the turnstiles and bade our rookie friend au revoir. Parting ways in the tunnel, he walked west in the direction of Balard; and we, east to Creteil-Preteiture. In less than an eyeblink our pilgrim disappeared amidst the madding crowd. Somehow I’ve faith that we’ll encounter him, encore, sooner than later.

The tour group seems altogether relatively young and highly diverse in composition. However, it may take some time before we actually meld as a community and click. It’s a truly different experience cavorting across Europe with Kris, as opposed to, say, with a large group that included Mom and Dad. In this way, we’re given a more profound sense of freedom and self-possessed independence. Without much effort, we can blend into the surroundings, quasi-camouflaged, instead of sticking out like sore thumbs (i.e. foundering tourists). Even though the first day heaped upon us hairpin hassles with the Metro, I’m convinced our celestial sentinels’ll sustain us. I’m quite thankful for the opportunity to share this fabulous, cosmopolitan city with Kris as her fondness for Paris escalates. Who knows, she may leave her heart in this beloved metropolis only to return in the near future to indisputably experience French life in the raw.

"I understood then why it is that Paris attracts the tortured, the hallucinated, the great maniacs of love. I understood why it is that here, at the very hub of the wheel, one can embrace the most fantastic, the most impossible theories, without finding them in the least strange; it is here that one reads again the books of his youth and the enigmas take on new meanings, one for every white hair. One walks the streets knowing that he is mad, possessed, because it is only too obvious that their cold, indifferent faces are the visages of one’s keepers. Here all the boundaries fade away and the world reveals itself for the mad slaughter-house that it is…An eternal city, Paris! More eternal than Rome, more splendorous than Nineveh. The very navel of the world to which, like a blind and faltering idiot, one crawls back on hands and knees" (H. Miller, Tropic of Cancer).

Okay, got 4 minutes to write something about this exhaustingly zesty day or else the bus’ll leave without us. Within the Sorbonne’s intellectual district in the core of le Quartier Latin, we encountered many young spirits like us wandering aimlessly in search for the ultimate bargain meal. After hours of feet-numbing sightseeing, we found a quaint, niched-in cafe facing the San Michel fountain that suited our palates and our pocketbooks. Catty-corner from our table rested an amiable Indian crepe-connoisseur shaping fluffy pastries. We practiced our fretfully fried French with him to no avail. Kris ordered a "plat du jour" while "j’ai mange du salad Nicoise."

Walking off the sumptuous meal, we perambulated along quaint Latin Quarter byways, stopping every few blocks to watch musicians perform and mimes mime. All this jazz while Kris started entertaining one of her Lucy-van-Pelt (of the Peanuts) moods incited by a wenchy vendor’s folly. Firstly, my loco sister decidedly wanted a Van Gogh Starry Night lighter as a souvenir from Paris’ Beatnik precinct. However, unable to spare two additional francs after shelling plenty already, Kris stormed out of the pitiful boutique sans the Zippo that would’ve lighted her (nonexistent) "cigs" because Old Woman Miser wouldn’t for the life of her grant us a wee starving-students discount.

Consequently, to cool off we sat atop rounded boulders along the edge of the Seine, whist (in the fashion of pageant-queen protocol) the two of us waved nonchalantly to passengers on board cruise ships parading down the river. What lunacy --- blowing kisses to Asian tourists aboard those cheesy dinner-disco liners --- amused masses eagerly snapping fotos of Parisian posers, (kooky foreigners themselves, mind you) with their Nikkon flash-boxes. "Who are these crazy girls in the picture?" they’re sure to remark upon developing their rolls of Kodak Golds.

Ah, but it would take more than lightsome jest to uplift princess Kris’ humors. Mais oui! Enter Lars, a lanky, afro-sporting skater punk of the bohemian mold. For a brief interlude, Kris, (for the moment) "my cousin from Chicago," deemed that he, like our wayfaring pilgrim, was an angel. Granted, yes "Citizen Kook" with his amusing antics successfully rescued her from the depths of uber-Somber-ville, but Um, this at the expense of my…life!? See, what Kris first dismissed as humored bisou-bisou flirtation, I soon took for trippy onslaught when he began shaking me close to the bridge’s edge, relating how he foresaw us "making beautiful babies together," calling me his petite-cherie. Kris and I looked at each other in brow-raising distress and weaned ourselves away from his smothering embraces. By this time, in my high-strung vision, he resembled a clown-on-rollerblading-stilts with kinky blown-out brown hair and stoned eyes that opened so wide that at one instant I saw only two small dots for pupils swimming in the whites of his oculi. "ACHTUNG, bay-beeh---GAME OVER!" we resolved. Out of peril and chortling in retrospect, we high-tailed our asses towards the gossamer sunset, stopping only to wave farewell to our newfound and newly lost cher ami.

Hola 2,000-year-old capital of Catalonia, the modernurban metropolis of Barthelona, where the city’s most celebrated promenade, Las Ramblas, boasts of endless boulevard well-seeded with cafés, bars, terraces, fountains, novelty shops, and newspaper kiosks. Here, a constant flood of humanity graces the urban esplanades of distinction and elegance in the Gothic Quarter whose narrow alleys invoke a sense of the medieval.

After rollicking around surrealist Gaudi’s playground and analyzing the aesthetics of an Art Noveau Sagrada-Familia cathedral, we lunched at a trendy bistro in Barcelona’s commercial district, where afterwards we dropped a few pesetas shopping. Pressed for time with dinner reservations con Contiki group at 6, we hurriedly returned to Hotel Orientale, for Lou and I wanted to dress fittingly for this $$ Catalan "banquet." Little did we know that Darren, our tour manager, & Co. were only taking the 25-or-so of us to an umpteenth-rate, dimly-lit restaurant with unappetizing paella and an even more unpalatable flamenco revue. It’s no wonder there was an unlimited supply of Sangria for the guests: only through pie-eyed smiles could one forget how botched the dinner really was --- aye, caramba!

Fortunately, our group of disheartened revelers reclaimed merriment at the onset of deep night. By 1 a.m., we found ourselves strolling along Rambla de Mar, a sliding boardwalk whose drawbridge connects the mainland to Moll D’Espanya, an isle furnished with arty boutiques and groovalicious discotheques. Golden with potion, we pulsated towards the source of the techno euphony.

Dionysis beams! Corfu was absolute bliss, the Olympic play-pen of impish Hellenic divinities. Close your eyes and imagine crystal-aquamarine, winter-blue, deep-azure waters, rocky precipices, undersea caverns. Add to this illusory conception 51 venturesome seafarers and voila: you’ve got a way kickin’ island-hopping, water-sportsing soiree on your hands.

Swimming in cool, inviting Ionian waters of the Greek isles composed my fantasy day in paradise. Unforgettable experiences include memories of Sandra and I torpedoing from the top deck of Captain George’s party-dinghy, getting pushed overboard with a champagne bottle as my life-saver, exploring cavernous underwater mazes, lunching on gyros con sun-dried tomatoes, and spitting out watermelon pits into the refreshing sea.

Kris, on the other hand, presently recovering from minor jellyfish trauma, may have thought otherwise!

Cough, cough, sneeze, sniff, cough, cough. Such is the less-than-mellifluous mess a chorus of 51 nauseated and ailing Contiki vagabonds produces in the course of a three-hour drive, due to too much Sangria in Barcelona, trop de pitchers of Zombie in Florence, and one too many Pina Coladas in Corfu. Adding to the decadence, one must factor in ills resulting from late-and-much-later-still nights, lack of sleep, mediocre diet, and suspect centralized AC on board the Tiki-monger bus.

In my quasi-klepto-ed bathrobe and cushy cotton socks, I recline in bed keeping vigil lest Lou stops breathing altogether from adverse antibiotic reactions. Haunting my psyche waltzes the question: is she or is NOT she allergic to the Amoxicillin, which she procured at a nondescript Venetian pharmacy? Eeeh. So come 2 a.m., and every half-hour interval thereof, I’m scheduled to rouse her awake from sporadic night-napping.

Tonight a group of nine-or-so advocates of classical music attended a concert featuring the Viennese (Wiener) Mozart Orchestra. After intermission, a lyric soprano and a dramatic tenor, costumed in period attire, delighted the audience with a selection of German and Italian melodies. Troubled with quasi-flu, oftentimes I found myself concentrating more on contracting my stomach muscles in such a way so as not to emit decorous coughs mid-piece, instead of appreciating without distraction euphonic arias sung by the vocalists. Hence, at each and every applause-pause, the two lionesses roared.

Yesterday, our entourage arrived in the festive Bavarian city of Munchen, land where steins of beer and helpings of pork knuckle float the locals’ boats. After checking into yet another IBIS Hotel, we took a walking tour of Marienplatz, home of the Glockenspiel, a famed cuckoo clock programmed to gyrate each hour.

Nightlife impinged on dawn at the Hauf-Brahaus Bavarian watering hole, with guests chanting mantras along the inebriated lines of "I’m prosit, I’m prosit dien game…liech…kite…einst vie trig zugba…PROST!" all evening long.

"Life was before him and time of no account. He could wander, for years if he chose, in unfrequented places, amid strange people, where life was led in strange ways. He did not know what he sought or what his journeys would bring him; but he had a feeling that he would learn something new about life and gain some clue to the mystery that he had solved only to find more mysterious. And even if he found nothing he would allay the unrest which gnawed at his heart" (W.S. Maugham, Of Human Bondage).

Fishing on a trout farm for a mere 85 shillings ($8) in Hofgarten was thrilling even though it took forever for me to lasso up a catch. Within ten minutes of her initial-cast, Kris had already ensnared a winner and was supervising the grilling of her trout. Since I was using up all the best baits on the modest premises, the attendant, a leathery old man, grew a bit peeved, eyeing me skeptically from across the pond. When I finally snagged a prized fish, my airborne friend flew into the nearby bushes before the fisherman could employ "the stick" meant to bludgeon the plumpish, writhing pisce to unconsciousness. The fresh catch, dee-lish when sear-fried with herbs and spices, wholly melted in my mouth.