It’s Saturday, 8 June, and H&I wake up about 8:30. We think the workmen should return to tile up their bathroom repair and Virginia said she would come with them to look at the door problem. They don’t show up. She apparently is not concerned about the door so we won’t be either. And fortunately the door has stayed “glued” to the wall.
We stupidly decide it’s the day to visit the Louvre. The place is packed—in fact there’s a sign saying it’s a sold out day. Even the “little known” secret entrance shared by Rick Steve’s has a huge line. We should turn around right then! But we persevere. Once in it is just too difficult to follow the map of this huge multi-story monument. We drop off Gail and Larry at one elevator (Larry’s back problem is exacerbated by climbing the stairs) thinking we’d pick them up at the same elevator door on the next floor. But NO! When they reach their floor, they must disembark to the hall on the other side of the elevator. So we are just passing each other trying to meet up. I’m really frustrated and ready to leave.
We ask Gail and Larry “what are your must-sees?” And let’s see them as fast as we can. So we see the Mona Lisa (I think not worth the effort), Winged Victory and Venus de Milo. IMHO the Louvre is not worth the time at all!! We eventually get the hell out of there, thank god.
We have tickets to the Catacombs at 3pm. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Paris In the many times we’ve been to Paris we have never seen the Catacombs. There are 131 steps down a spiral staircase, then a 1.5 mile walk underground and then a climb of 112 steps back up a spiral staircase. In brief the Catacombs contain the bones of 6 million people. In 1774 Paris needed to find a solution to the overflowing cemeteries. The air in Paris was being increasingly contaminated by the putrification of the bodies in the cemeteries. 🙄 The bodies eventually get tossed into old limestone mines under Paris. In the early 1800s there is a renovation of the mines and the bones are organized, cleaned, stacked aesthetically and labeled. That is how you see them today. It’s pretty interesting. But I tried to keep my mouth closed the entire time we were there! 😷 (I noticed that Larry got bone dust on his shirt from leaning against the wall.)
We are parched when we arise from the dead. We have refreshing Aperol Spritzes at the nearest cafe. We enjoy (ha!) listening to an American woman with a southern accent chewing out a bank employee on the phone about her children not being able to use their credit card to buy shoes (probably a REALLY important purchase).
Today it’s the Rosenberg’s 51st wedding anniversary! We had reservations at a favorite restaurant of ours but getting there seems like too much trouble so we cancel them. We search for a nearby, well recommended place and find Le 52. It is a short walk from our place but in a direction we’ve not explored. Imagine our surprise, as we walk there, to see a lot of really neat green grocers, cheese shops, wine shops and épiceries. Thank goodness we did not wait until we were about to leave to find this neighborhood gold mine.
Le 52 is a neat looking modern restaurant. Gail & I have champagne to start; H has a G&T; and Larry has a Caipirinha (made with Brazilian cachaça rum). For the first course, Gail has a mesclun salad with a slab of goat cheese floating on a slice of gingerbread—sounds weird but Gail said it was delicious. Larry has ceviche and both H and I have burrata cheese with tapenade and red pepper coulis. For our main course Gail and I have pork belly with farro, and thinly sliced pickled cucumber. The guys have bonito. Our server recommends a nice French Chardonay:
We order 2 gelato dishes to share with scoops of Madagascar vanilla, pistachio and hazelnut—wow! Those gelato flavors are incredible. It is a great evening.
Unfortunately I wake up about midnight with a fever and chills, an aching stomach and diarrhea. As those symptoms subside, the cough sets in. I am now officially among the sick.
Sunday: We all sleep in and try to recover. Virginia arrives close to noon and now all will be revealed about the door. It seems that the door has a feature where you can make it tip away from the frame to let air in at the top of the door. The door was never in jeopardy of falling down! I suggested they have a book detailing items like that but I think it fell on deaf ears. But to make up for the bathroom leak and to reward us for our patience, Virginia gives us a bottle of Mumm’s champagne and 2 boxes of macarons.
About 3pm Gail, Larry and I go for a walk towards our wandering last night. We buy a few things from the grocery store. We get eggs for a dinner of scrambled eggs with lardons.
One thing to emphasize that is so different from all of our previous trips to France: Everyone speaks English and loves to speak English. Everyone is so playful in the way they interact with us. It is now so easy to not speak French when everyone loves practicing their English. I feel conflicted about this. We were not in any way unhappy with attempting to communicate in French on our prior visits. Sometimes it was a huge struggle. For example, several years ago we were looking at knives to buy. The man at the knife shop kept telling us in French we had 2 options with the knife. We could not understand what those 2 options were. We tried several times to understand. Finally, with a bit of exasperation, he said in pretty good English: You can choose carbon steel or stainless steel. So why didn’t he say so when it was clear we were not understanding what he said. I think in retrospect if we would have ask him if he spoke English right at the beginning, he would have readily helped us in English. Anyway, I’m getting lazy and speaking in English more and more.