Little Green Bag, R. I. P.

Lamen Restauration Rapide - 1 star
Rue des Petits Champs and Rue Ste.-Anne, 75002 Paris

Best Saveurs - 2 stars
Passage de Choiseul, 75002 Paris

Exki - 1 star
Boulevard des Italiens, 75002 Paris

Little Georgette - 2 stars
Impasse Gomboust, 75002 Paris

Last week I left my suitcase in my hotel in Paris so I didn't have to carry it to the United States and back over the weekend - especially important because I insist on taking the train in and out of Paris rather than a taxi. When I unpacked it on Tuesday, I couldn't find my little green toiletries bag - the one with my razor, shaving cream, toothpaste, nail clippers, hair brush, and so on. I probably forgot to pack it last week, and the hotel didn't have any record of anyone finding it. So I had to buy a new set of supplies at Monoprix, perhaps my favorite supermarket in the world.

Losing my little green bag made me sad. It wasn't particularly nice - I suspect it cost me about $15 - but I had had it since at least 1996, and it had been all around the world with me. I bought it before I went backpacking all over southern Italy for The Berkeley Guides that summer, because it was big, expandable, and waterproof, and since then it made it to Rome, Florence, London, Paris, Berlin, Toronto, Singapore, Seoul, Bilbao, San Sebastian, Manchester, Wales, Dublin, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, and dozens of cities large and small in the United States. It was part of the travel routine, and I will miss it.

It was one of those weeks when you never catch up from spending a night on a trans-Atlantic red-eye, but the eating was not bad, thanks largely to the proliferation of varied casual options in Paris's second arrondissement, home of the Paris stock market and a large Asian population. The first night I wasn't feeling well so I had a large bowl of ramen at an authentic-seeming Japanese noodle house on the corner where half the staff didn't speak French or English, just Japanese. The service was fast, the broth was comfortingly salty, and the noodles were just right for a tired and hungry traveler.

The next day we want to Best Saveurs, one of dozens of casual places where you can get a fast, cheap (by Parisian standards) lunch to eat there or take back to the office (once a taboo in French companies, now becoming more and more common). If they have the hot couscous I usually have that, which is very good, but this time I had three salads - couscous with vegetables, carrots, and chick peas - and an apricot tart. For dinner I went to Exki, which is the closest thing to Pret a Manger I've found in Paris. Everything is laid out neatly for you to choose from and clearly labeled with ingredients and a convenient "vege" for vegetarian, and there's an emphasis on organic ingredients. The food itself - chervil and coriander soup, tortellini with artichoke hearts and tomato sauce, and real French whole-milk yogurt in a glass jar - was mediocre (except for the yogurt, of course), but the place gets a star for trying to provide a cheap, casual dinner for people who just want to eat and get to bed.

The last day after the client meeting we went to lunch at Little Georgette, a whimsical nouveau-French restaurant that specializes in small dishes. For example, I ordered the "Dolce Vita" and got a salad of mixed green vegetables, lasagna with diced vegetables and tomato sauce, a risotto with parmesan cheese, and a tomato-basil-mozzarella salad, all arranged on a large tray. The food was good, and the "Very good au chocolat" (that's really what it was called) was an excellent warm, meltingly soft chocolate cake. It was a fun way to relax with the team after a hectic few days.

But the high point of my trip was the day before the demo, when we walked out of the client's office after the final run-through at 6 pm, with no more work to do. I sat in the sun at a cafe with my friends Alex and Sigrid, who are leaving in a few days for Tokyo, and thought back to the day in October when they had just arrived in Paris and we sat in the sun on a grassy hill in the Buttes Chaumont and watched the dogs playing. Yes, we talked about work, but it still felt like time had stopped and we could sit there forever, and it was the most natural thing in the world.