Greece 1964- An Innocent Abroad

Delphi 1964- I'm on the left in a smocked dress my mother made and a pair of sandals I loved

Here I am in Greece on my first trip to Europe, sitting on an ancient stone wall in Delphi with three school friends, laughing at who knows what. A group of us were traveling on a short jaunt in Greece, lead by Sarah Lawrence College. For two weeks we traveled around the Peloponnese by bus and to Mykonos and Crete by boat. A young Greek woman was our guide. After this prelude we headed for a summer course in Paris where we lived in dorms near Porte d'Orleans. In the mornings we studied French, art history and existential literature with Professors from Sarah Lawrence and in the afternoons we had the free run of Paris. This was the Paris of the early 60's, the Paris of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in "Breathless" and I couldn't catch my breath. We ate in bistros, visited museums and mastered the metro. On weekends the program arranged for us to visit Mont San Michel and the Loire Valley to see a Sound and Light performance at Chambord ( if I remember correctly.) Though Greece seemed terribly foreign, Paris was perfect. Candace, the girl on the right in the Liberty print dress, was my mentor. She spoke excellent French, knew just how to order poulet rôti and pommes frites in the neighborhood bistro, and introduced me to the fragrance "Chant d'Aromes" at Guerlain on the Champs- Élysée. I wore it until it was discontinued many years later.

Belmondo and Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 breakthrough film " À Bout de Souffle  ("Breathless")