What a week!

Last week was the awful. We woke up on Friday morning to no heat and no hot water. Paul called the company that sold us the furnace and with which we still have a maintenance contract at a little after 6. He expected to get the answering machine but woke up the wife. He was told to call at 9, which he did, giving the error message showing on the furnace (a sensor on the air intake) and was told a technician would call him back. So we waited. At lunch time, Paul called, again, and the guy hung up after saying he was eating. Half an hour later, Paul called, again and was told the technician would call…. This went on all afternoon. At a little past 7 p.m. he called once more and got a young guy who is new and not a technician but who took our plight to heart and came over. Via WhatsApp, he consulted with the technician, but was unable to solve the problem. There is no service over the weekend, so we froze until Monday. The house, on Sunday, was down to 7ºC. 

Friends lent us a couple of space heaters to supplement the one we already had in the bedroom. The bathroom became quite toasty, but without hot water, we didn't spend much time, there. On Saturday, we went to our friend's for lunch. Of course, it was nice to have a warm meal in a warm dining room. But even nicer was spending almost 4 hours with friends. They invited us to spend the night, but we went home.

Monday morning, the phoning started again and the technician finally showed up by the end of the afternoon and turned out to be unfamiliar with our furnace. He told us the other technician would come by, but that didn't happen. On Tuesday, Paul called, again, first thing, and told the boss to give the technician the part. He was told that we had to call the manufacturer to order the part; he didn't have it and he didn't order them. That was a surprise, so Paul called the manufacturer, whose staff was just as surprised to hear the that. He gave us the name of a couple of approved repairers not far from us (and our supplier was not among them). Tuesday afternoon, the furnace was repaired, with the new part.

This adventure of ours was nothing compared to the catastrophic cold and snow that caused the power outages in Texas and the mid-West.

This week, it's Springlike! Today is Sunday and it was sunny and warm so we went for a long walk. There's an app called VisioRando. It's based on IGN maps. That's the Institut géographique national and they are the best maps for hiking. The app keeps reminding you to subscribe, but I'm not ready to do that, yet. We didn't follow the hike exactly, today, because we were starting from home and bypassed the RER station. I then retraced our steps in Map My Walk to figure out our actual distance. There is a slight problem with Map My Walk, though, because it did not allow me to trace our walk through the parks. In the 40+ years we've lived on the border between Nogent and Fontenay, I'd never gone for a casual walk in Fontenay. The red dot on that map is home. On that map, the Fontenay RER station is northwest of us. The road to the center of Fontenay is north. Today, though, instead of following the straight Rue de Joinville, we meandered and then cut westward through the park behind the city hall. We'd never stopped to go through this park before. This brought us to the back of the church and to more familiar paths. We went up the Rue du Cheval Rû, but instead of following the curve, we continued on the Rue des Belles Vues, which took us through a park. There's work going on and it was fenced off on the right so there was no view. All of a sudden we found ourselves at the back of one of our doctor's buildings. We then continued through the old quarry, which is a beautiful ecopark that we never knew existed. There, the views are splendid. It was slightly overcast so we couldn't see all the way to the other side of Paris, but it was still an impressive view. From there, it was all downhill, along the lower border of the quarry and back into the center of Fontenay, to our familiar route home. 

It's summer

The other rose bush from England -- Hot chocolate

 Last Sunday I was a tourist in Paris. The Ps were here with grand-daughter and a friend of hers, 15 years old, so they wanted to pack in the Eiffel Tower, the Orsay museum, and maybe a few other sites. Sunday morning I arrived at the Eiffel Tower at just past 10 and found them in the North tower line after a couple of intercontinental text messages. It was starting to get hot, but we were in the shade. We talked; the girls went off to the souvenir stands to check out prices. After about an hour an a half we were waiting for the elevator to go up to the second level where we got in another line to reach the top. At least while you are in line you are also looking at Paris below and getting your bearings. A walk around the top, I did not climb up the stairs for the outdoor peek, and in line again for the elevator down. By the time we got down, we were all pretty hungry and the heat was already weighing on everyone. I'm not complaining. It's just that you forget so fast how long it takes to "do" the Eiffel Tower. Grin and bear it and be sure to be in good conversation with such pleasant company.

One of the rose bushes we picked up in England

 We continued our gabbing through lunch. We walked over to the Boulevard de la Bourdonnais, near the American Library and stopped at a corner café. We waited for menus. We waited to order, and when we finally started our order, the waiter shouted at us that we couldn't order sandwiches from him; you could only do that at the bar. That, in spite of the fact that others of us were ordering other dishes. He just walked off to let the sandwich eaters choose something else and then kept ignoring us. We finally got up and went to the opposite corner and had an excellent lunch that was even cheaper than if we'd stayed at the first café. I think we were seated and served in less time than the first guy had shown up to take the order, too.

Herbs: parsley, (no sage), rosemary, thyme,  and mint

Rhubarb -- in fact I harvested 2 lbs. this morning
 and made rhubarb pie!

After all that standing in lines and then sitting at lunch, we walked to the Musée d'Orsay. The girls felt this was a really long walk, but I just mapped it on mapmywalk.com and it's not quite 1.6 mi. or just over 2.5 km. We walked in the shade and stopped at some souvenir shops, and to get water. Then, R stood in line at the museum while we girls stood in the shade by the side. There's some renovation work going on, some of the post-impressionists are grouped together in a side room, making it very convenient to see the major pieces together. We were all pretty tired before a full hour had gone by, so we finally left to catch a cab back to the hotel.

Zuccini

Well, on Sunday afternoons there are no taxis to be found at taxi stands. We had cool drinks at the corner café and still no cabs came by, so we took the metro, which is, of course, always the best solution. It's just that you can't always convince the others that it's going to be faster. After a short rest at the hotel and showing  off our respective photo albums and R showing me some cool apps on his Ipad, we headed back to the metro to go to the restaurant. There was no way I could get them to walk (less than the earlier walk, but still a little over a mile), so we got back on the metro. Anne met us on our way from the metro station to the restaurant for dinner. Louis and Gwen were already there when we arrived.

Tomatoes

Cucumbers

Firmin le Barbier on the rue de Montessuy, again, near the Eiffel Tower, is excellent for a small group. It's been written up in several guides and deserves its excellent reputation. It's not too expensive. It's small, so you really do have to reserve.

My throat, which had been scratchy since our return from England, was fairly sore. I thought I was just talking too much. But on Monday morning, I had no voice at all and even today, Saturday, it's still not normal. Seems other people are dealing with laryngitis, too, so I guess it's a virus going around.

Hope you've enjoyed the pictures of our vegetable patch.