Au revoir, Paris

This was written for a Sunday, two weeks ago in fact. It is part of the effort to document and re-live our most recent, amazing adventure. So, if you’d be so kind as to cast your mind back two weeks …

On Sunday morning The Yankee had two presentations to deliver to the International Communication Association.

In a word, both presentations were brilliant.

Afterward we visited the Garden of the Great Explorers Marco-Polo and Cavelier-de-la-Salle and the Luxembourg Gardens. The garden was created in 1867, and this fountain, was installed in 1875.

That’s the Quatre-Parties-du-Monde fountain, or the Fountain of the Four Parts of the World. The theme is related to the nearby Paris Observatory, and the four women who support the celestial sphere, was created by a 19th century master, Jean-Baptiste_Carpeaux. (In the U.S. you can see his works at the Art Institute in Chicago, the New York Metropolitan Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Legion of Honor in San Francisco and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. The smaller pieces, the turtles and fish and sea horses, were designed by a man named Emmanuel Frémiet, who was famed for his lifelike animals. And if you get closer to it all, you can see the craft of all of the artisans involved. There’s a lot of implied movement in this fountain.

A quick glance at the classic Haussmanian style of buildings that so typify central Paris.

And here we are in front of the Luxembourg Palace, home of the French Senate. And these are the Jardin du Luxembourg.

We sat on a bench in the garden, and enjoyed watching the sun dance through the leaves below the afternoon sky.

She was reviewing her mental notes for the next stage of our trip, which we’ll start talking about here tomorrow.

But, first, we stopped for dinner. We found a little casual Italian place that was on the way between here and there, and that was quiet and charming, until a very large family, fresh from Disneyland Paris showed up. After that, it was loud and charming.

We met some friends for a dessert crepe. Normally I’m not a crepe guy, but our friend had a long history with the place we wound up. She’d eaten here a lot once upon a time when she studied in France. It’s run by an older woman who suffers no fools and, apparently, likes her young employees. She was feisty.

And they made great crepes. There was chocolate in mine. That was the right choice. After dessert crepes, we all ventured over to the Eiffel Tower for pictures.

Yes, there are four pictures of the Eiffel Tower here. I didn’t want to choose between the slightly different versions. They’re all beautiful, and you can patiently enjoy each of them.

And that is where we said our goodbyes to our friends. We’ll see them again in a few months, for a big party, but hugs below the shiny, glittery tower seem a cosmopolitan way to say until then.

And while they had to head back to the United States the next day, we did not catch a plane.

We took a train.

Where do you suppose we went?

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