I was awakened again last night by the neighbors but this time it was a little earlier: 12:30am. Why on earth are these people fiddling around in the kitchen at that hour??
We are completely lazy all morning. We have a breakfast of delicious melon, baguette with butter and mirabelle jam, and Mamie Nova yogurt. I work on the travelogue and Howard tries to put it on the website with photos. He gets frustrated because every time he tries to post a travel photo, a photo of Toby in silly Xmas reindeer antlers pops up. I guess the dogs are sending us a message that they don’t want us to forget them. We sure miss the little guys. Patty has been sending us photos of them every-so-often. In spite of the time Howard has spent on the travelogue, nothing gets posted.
I try to call a restaurant that we’ve liked in the past to make reservations for lunch. I get sooooo frustrated because there is no hope of communicating with the woman on the line! She will not even try and I hang up on her!
About 1:00 we finally get out the door. I have found another restaurant to try and we start walking in that direction. We find ourselves in the midst of a WILD electronic music street festival. The kids are pretty out of control (in fact one young man later dies from a fall off a statue) and the music is breaking our eardrums (and wreaking havoc with Howard’s hearing aids). We veer off course to get away from the craziness and have now lost our way to the restaurant. We keep wandering until we find ourselves at Rue Buci, a great place to be. The traffic is horrible because the street festival has blocked off numerous streets. In frustration, horns are honking and cars are trying to edge one another out on the tiny Rue Buci side streets. We find one of our favorite cafés, Au Chai de l’Abbaye, and take refuge there from the craziness. It is quiet inside in spite of the bottleneck of cars outside the windows.
Our server, a middle-aged professional waiter, asks what we would like to drink. He says “Champagne, maybe…” It doesn’t take much persuading for us to order champagne! I order steak (it is delicious) and potatoes Dauphinois, and Howard orders duck breast and white beans. We each have a glass of red wine with our meal ($105). There is a sweet dog with a single lady about my age. The dog clearly knows how to get all the treats he wants and is very entertaining!
We then stop by our favorite wine shop, Le Derniere Goutte (The Last Drop/Taste). The lady who helps us has been there for at least 10 years; we remember her. She is American and speaks French so poorly I wonder how French customers put up with it. But, mission accomplished–we buy one of our favorite roses, a Sancere white, and 2 nice reds. That should hold us for 8 hours–HA!
We grab a few items for a light dinner and head home. I nurse my swollen legs and my still sore derrière to get ready for another day in Paris.