After a nice an uneventful flight through Chicago and Frankfurt (and an amazing sunrise over England, the pics of which don’t do it justice!), we arrived in Paris around 8:25 and caught the RER B to the St Michel station. We emerged from the metro to a gorgeous blue sky and temperatures in the low 60s.
We walked the few blocks to 24 Rue Dauphine, left our bags while the cleaners finished up and picked up a couple baguettes at Eric Kayser, a couple bottles of wine at Nicolas, then went to Carrefour and collected milk and butter (they are both SO tasty here!), greens and some “bubbly water.” We brought those back, then noticed an e-mail from Ze Kitchen Galerie asking us to confirm reservations for tomorrow’s lunch so we popped around the corner and took care of that.
From there we wandered a bit, toward the Marche St. Germain (closed Mondays), then toward the Monoprix on Rue de Rennes to pick up some fish. It’s an interesting setup – the groceries are in the basement, just past the lingerie, pajamas, etc.
On the way back, we walked by Hotel Madison and reminisced about the time we pulled up there at the end of a 2-month trip around Europe with Lauren, who was two at the time, with a car packed completely full of stuff, including a lovely little German wooden sled strapped to the top. We had to unload a few things to even get to Lauren in the carseat. The dollar was at an all-time high at that time and European currencies felt a bit like Monopoly money. We had also been living on “student” mode and Mark had been moonlighting in emergency rooms and we saved all that for our trip. That trip was just fantastic for so many reasons well beyond the state of the dollar.
Bea arrived a bit before 1:00 with some nice pate and Joe arrived a few minutes later with some cheese. We assembled a salad and had such a nice lunch with them. They are getting all their plans made for their wedding in September, so it’s a fun time. It’s really really great to be getting to know our nieces and nephew as adults (and our friends’ children) not to mention our own children!! What a great blessing that has turned out to be.
I crashed for about an hour while Mark went out on a bike. Since we are here only two full days this time, I didn’t want to sleep the afternoon away, so we walked over to Gibert Joseph, the wonderful bookstore just south of the intersection of St Germain and St Michel. It was drizzling just a tiny bit but very pleasant walking. After a good deal of time spent in the children’s department in the basement (while Mark looked at cookbooks and maps, etc.), we headed home and by then it was definitely raining. We were so grateful to have had the beautiful morning!!
At 7ish, we left for the apartment of Jean Claude and Olivia Barnathan, whom we met several years ago through our dear friend Terri. They live a few blocks away near Rue de Seine and Rue des Beaux Arts and I love walking to their place because it’s nearly non-stop galleries between here and there. We had a lovely time catching up on our families over a very nice bottle of Savigny from a vineyard Jean Claude took us to outside of Beaune the first year we met.
When we got home, we could hardly keep our eyes open but Mark pulled out the cabillaut (cod) he’d picked up earlier in the day, and the potatoes and asparagus, and made quick work of both, producing a really tasty dinner.
Hither, Yon and Skies 