TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2008

We had our first visit with friends today. Gabrielle Forrest and her daughter, Claire Caines, are in Paris for a week and we arranged to meet them for lunch. Gabrielle, for those of you who know Millburn, is a retired secretary for the public schools and a member of the Millburn Retired Educators. She has been to Paris many times and enjoys coming back. We met them at their hotel and Claire suggested the restaurant at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs which is located next to the Jardin du Carrousel which in turn is next to the Musée du Louvre. The restaurant is called le Saut du Loup which literally means the jump, or leap, of the wolf. It is a very modern style room, but we ate out on the terrace which had marvelous views of the gardens, the Louvre, and even the Eiffel Tower.The menu was very upscale and we enjoyed our lunch. Below is a photo of Alexandria, Claire, and Gabrielle. Also, a view of the gardens.

Before leaving the restaurant, we visited "les toilettes". Have you ever seen a square toilet?



We went into the book store of the museum where we found many books on decorative arts and the also had a large room with all kinds pottery, place settings, vases in modern design. We even would have loved to buy the chair pictured below but it wouldn't have fit in our luggage.



We parted company after the book store and everyone agreed that we had a wonderful lunch and that we enjoyed the company. We wished Gabrielle and Claire a wonderful rest of the week in Paris.

We had a terrible time with buses today. Our #29 bus was "perturbed" due to all kinds of construction and heavy traffic in the Marais. We discovered another, the #20, which was almost as good. This morning, the traffic on the ave Daumesnil was very heavy and slow. Going to lunch, it took over an hour to do a normally 1/2 hour trip. And that was with a very severe detour. The Parisians seem to roll with the punches when the buses are a problem. Since we ate out at noon, we had a light supper in the evening.