Goodbye to Paris, part I

On July 23, we took the train to Paris to see Christine, who had been so very helpful to us when we first arrived, clueless, in Paris a year ago. The weather was beautiful, so we walked the twenty minutes from the train station to Place d'Italie where we had arranged to meet. We tried not to think about the fact that this would be one of our last trips to Paris during our sabbatical.

The small park shown above, complete with a grate blowing air quite strongly out of the sidewalk Marilyn-Monroe-style, is a lovely recent addition to the Place.

We had lunch at a Japanese restaurant near Christine's apartment. It was a real pleasure to be able to sit and converse with her more or less naturally, unlike the last time we had seen her nearly a year ago, and we think she was thrilled with the progress all four of us had made in French. To us it felt almost as though we were able to prove to her that her patience and generosity last August were not wasted!

After a great lunch that included a lot of joking with the Japanese owners, who clearly knew Christine and who loved playing with the children, we hopped on the Métro and traveled all the way across Paris -- giving Betsy plenty of time to nap in Christine's arms -- to the Jardin d'Acclimatation, a sort of combination playground / amusement park that is a terrific place for kids. We had never been to this place, nor even heard of it, so we were very lucky to have Christine along to recommend it!

We had barely gotten inside the jardin when Molly and Betsy were captivated by the house of funny mirrors, where we must have spent half an hour laughing at the images that at least for some of us (guess which ones!) never ceased to be uproariously funny.

Speaking of funny mirrors, here is a slightly unusual family portrait of (most of) the four of us along with Christine.

When we were finally able to tear the children away from the mirrors, we took a ride on a boat that travels along a small canal, ate some fried dough with powdered sugar, and finished the afternoon with a long stint at the fabulous playground that included the largest rope version of the Eiffel tower we had ever seen. (You'd be surprised how many rope Eiffel towers there are on French playgrounds; we know of no fewer than three.)

On the boatride, Christine took one of the few photos we have of just Cricket and Dave.

Even though we didn't get a chance to see Christine's husband Jean-Marc, Katia and her family, or (Katia and Christine's friend) Anne-Claire on this trip, it was really wonderful to see Christine one last time before returning home.