Not much to report
Today there wasn’t much to report. I can pretty much sum it up like this:
1. My parking guy called me “ma petite americane” in the evening – kinda cute. At least he keeps coming up with originals.
2. Got word from Mandy that she probably can’t get on a flight for the weekend. She was supposed to get here Thursday or Friday, but the flights are pretty much all full or overbooked. She’s going to try, but it’s not looking good. If it doesn’t work out, honestly, it’ll be ok – I was having a little bit of visitor-overload, and I was missing my French friends, too. And on that note…
3. I tried to watch Amelie without the subtitles. I figured since I’ve seen it a zillion times I could make it. Nope, too hard. That’ll have to be after the advanced class.
4. I chatted with Majid online and made plans for pretty much the whole weekend. I think we’re going to try to go hang out on the quay of the Seine on Friday if the weather holds – lots of people do that in the summers here, just take a bottle of wine and a picnic – but the weather has been sucky. So we’ll see. Saturday is The Da Vinci Code – opening in France was Wednesday, before the rest of the world gets it on Friday. I guess that’s the thank-you for letting ‘em film all over Paris, including the Louvre. Sunday I think we’re going to walk the Canal St. Martin, something I’ve been told I should do. So that pretty much sums up what I’m doing this weekend...
Mike leaves...
Today I took the morning off to take Mike to the airport. I felt a little like I was playing hooky, but it actually makes a lot more sense rather than drive out practically to the airport to get to the office and then back again. I asked Mike what his favorite thing was in Paris, and he said the Eiffel Tower – he said we saved the best for last. Not a bad way to do it.
Tonight I had an easy night. My big news was that I tried a different take-out pizza place from down the street. Other than that I got caught up on the blog, since I was waaay behind. It takes a ton of time, and it’s hard work! But worth it, I hope…
Lazy day for Mike's last day in Paris
On Sunday we were very lazy. We’d decided we weren’t going to pack too much in today, and we took advantage of it. We slept in, and eventually I went out for breakfast – we made good use of the new high-grade olive oil with fresh garlic, crushed pepper, and a hot baguette from next door. About 2:00 we decided we’d head out, but we sat down on the couch and ended up sleeping there for two hours. We finally left the house for good just after 4:00, prompted by the 4:30 organ recital in Notre Dame that I told Mike we had to go to. That, of course, was amazing – luckily we caught about 15-20 minutes of it as we walked around the church. After touring the insides and outsides of the church, we sat in the square just in front for a while and watched people walk by and hand-feed the birds. We tried to take a boat taxi to the Eiffel Tower, but it was much more expensive than I remembered, so we took the RER instead. When we got there, we found two impromptu concerts – one live concert band playing Star Wars across the lawn, and a techno house party just across the river at Trocadero to celebrate the European Champions League final here in Paris on Wednesday. (That’s basically the European football championship – it’s like their Super Bowl, and people go nuts.) Depending on where you stood, you could hear at least one and probably both of the music sources. We walked over to the Star Wars stage; it ended, of course, just as we got there, but we got some great pictures of the tower. We walked back, got ice cream, stood in line for tickets to go up, and listened to the techno. We got tickets all the way to the top – Mike’s point was that if you come all the way to Paris, you gotta go all the way. Good point – although in my four previous trips to Paris I’d only made it up to the second level, which frankly was high enough for me. Nonetheless, we went up to the 2nd level and hung out there for just a few minutes before heading all the way up. I was pretty nervous in the elevator on the way up there, but it wasn’t too bad – when you get off, it’s all glassed in, so it actually feels safer to me than the 2nd level….that is, until you take the half-flight of stairs up to the outside part. Lemme tell you, that is a long way up there. I was sufficiently nervous to stay pretty close to the inside walls, while Mike, naturally, just laughed. We hung out there and took pictures, then walked across the river as the tower was being lit up and waited for the top of the hour (10:00) when the tower lights twinkle for 10 minutes. Some people might think it’s tacky, but I think it’s fantastic. Mike thought so, too. After deciding it was Italian over French for dinner, Mike suggested we actually go back to La Rughetta. That makes three trips to the same restaurant for him this trip, but at least he can’t blame me for this one – it was his idea – and I have to admit it’s one of the best restaurants I’ve been to in the city. After a very good but very quick dinner – the service tonight was also the fastest I’ve seen here – we came home, watched more TV, drank more wine, and crashed.
