Petit Paul

When Jouni left after his visit, he had to be in Paris for a mid-morning train to Geneva. Meanwhile, we had been invited -- thanks largely to the tiny sweater that Cricket knitted (!!) and sent to them -- to visit a statistician colleague of Dave's, his wife, and their two-week-old baby Paul that same afternoon at their apartment in Paris. Thus, it made sense for us to accompany Jouni on the train the Paris, but we had a couple of hours to kill that morning after we arrived.

We decided to visit the Sainte-Chapelle, a chapel near Notre Dame famous for its stained glass windows. Because it is completely encircled by the Palais de Justice, it is necessary to pass through a security checkpoint to visit it and thus there had always been a long line to get in during the brief period when we lived in Paris in August. Early April seemed like a better time of year to see it, and indeed the wait was not long.

Sure enough, la Sainte-Chapelle is impressive even on a fairly cloudy day -- in fact, some of the stained glass might be a little hard to see in full sun. The windows, on all four sides of the smallish chapel, tell a series of stories from the Bible, literally from Genesis all the way around the building to the book of Revelations. We were able to identify a couple of the stories depicted, which was sort of difficult due to the height of the windows. Shown here is the rectangular panel that includes the story of the burning bush, which appears as sort of a pink artichoke in the upper right section of the panel. You can also see Moses' snazzy yellow shoes, which you might remember from the scripture.

After la Sainte-Chapelle, we made our way via the Métro to chez Paul. Here is a picture of the sweater, with Paul in it this time, though this was not taken during our visit. Paul slept the entire time -- at least five hours! -- and I'm sure his parents paid dearly that night.

We had a wonderful afternoon, as did Paul we suppose. The French don't really do brunch, so we had brought along the ingredients for some typical American brunch food -- biscuits -- while our hosts Pierre and Laurence had prepared a delicious salad and a couple of really great quiches.

Plus, they had comté. Comté is, by far, Betsy's favorite cheese in France. It is named for the Franche-Comté region of France, just south of Alsace on the German border, where it is produced. Also, Pierre is apparently from this region himself and he had a big chunk of the cheese from what he considers to be one of the best comté-sellers in Paris. The look on Betsy's face in this picture is not something she affected for the benefit of the camera, it's really how she reacted when Pierre asked if she wanted some comté. Oh, and the rest of us like it too.

Sorry for the digression, but some of the facts about comté (the likes of which are by no means unique to comté) are amusing and revealing. For instance, the regulations governing the production of comté state that only milk from montbéliard cows (whatever those are) is permitted, and each cow must have at least a hectare of grazing. No grated cheese may be sold under the comté name. And finally, any comté that is not judged to be of high enough quality cannot be sold as comté and must instead be sold as gruyère (horrors!).

Anyway, back to Paul. After a wonderful brunch and even the beginnings of what might be called conversation in French, we all went for a walk with Paul in the stroller (asleep, of course) and to a café. When it started getting late, we said our farewells, hopped on the Métro back to the Austerlitz train station, and caught our train back home to Orléans. All in all, it was a wonderful day in Paris, the type of day we will undoubtedly miss being able to have with so little effort in just a few short months.