An Ile de France Walk -- at last

A small gaggle of geese by the river

Caillebotte property at Yerres

At last! It's been such a long time since I went on one of these walks! Yesterday, when I decided that I really wanted to go, Louis called to ask if one of us could take his car for inspection, but thank goodness he was able to take care of it, because of course, I would have done it, but it would have been one more Wednesday lost. As it was it was a gorgeous day for a walk.

Take a look at the Ile de France Walks blogpost for details of this particular walk. Every week I get the email invitation and almost every week I say to myself, "boy, I'd like to go on that walk" and every week, something seems to come up to prevent it. Sometimes, it's just not for me -- too long, or too difficult.

Even today, I dropped out a little early with some other walkers. I had a blister that was bothering me and didn't think it necessary to continue for the sake of continuing. I dropped out at Yerres, where the group came up to a bridge on the river practically in front of the Caillebotte property. This is the house that belonged to the Caillebotte family and that he painted in several of his paintings. I recognized the areas in front of the doors where the women of the household read, sewed, knitted, while he painted, with the immense garden in the background. Having seen the Caillebotte exhibit in May, I was very interested. (My post on the Caillebotte exhibit.)

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.

Family visits

Paul and I got back a few days ago from a visit to the Husaunndees in Northampton. Aurelia is getting to be a big girl now. She goes up on the big slide, likes the swings, the climbing toys and all that. She's very expressive, if not always comprehensible. She repeats just about anything in English or in French. And she eats just about everything, too. We were completely charmed. 

We also got a chance to see the house that Claire and Geoff are buying. It's nice. Big rooms. There will be a bit of work to do on it, but nothing preventing living in it immediately. 

And Charlotte came for the weekend, so we got to play with her, too, and then accompany her back to Woking and see Geoff's parents and the rest of the family, including the newcomer, Daniel, who is just two months old. We bought a couple of rose bushes and blueberry bushes for the garden.

The vet took the cat for the week we were gone. We'll ask him to do that again when we go back, but it still makes just going off for a couple of days difficult. We'd like to go down and see Gwen's folks, meet up with some other friends in the Tourraine.

Before going to England, I had dinner with the kids and Sarah and Kyle, who were in Paris for just a few days before joining their family in the Alps to finish their vacation. That was fun. Gwen had never met either of them and for Louis and Anne, it was the first time meeting Kyle and it had been a long time since they'd seen Sarah. We had dinner at the Bouillon Racine, a really fine restaurant. Very much in its Art Nouveau origingal look. 

Sarah and Kyle have returned home and now it's Roger and Gloria's turn for Paris before they, too, go back. They should be getting in later today with Shelby and a friend of hers. They only have two days in Paris. We're all having dinner together tomorrow. 

I think C was supposed to be coming to Paris for work last week, but I guess I missed her. J and E are coming in a few weeks for a longer stay and other friends are coming in September, so I hope we'll all be able to get together, then.

Pleasant weather

We're having a drought, the hottest spring on record, and gorgeous sunny days. We need rain, but ideally, that would be in the evening or at night so we could still have these beautiful days. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, but they said that for last weekend, too.
In the meantime, the raspberries are almost as abundant as last year's crop even if I think the berries are a little smaller. The tomatoes are coming along fine. I planted the zuchini and cucumbers so late, it's too soon to see what's going to happen.
I'm not really worried about cucumbers, tomatoes and salads coming from Spain or closer to home. I prefer closer to home, but I always have preferred local when I can find it and it's not twice the price of Spanish. It's really a shame that the authorities were so quick to pinpoint the blame for the E-coli outbreak in Germany on Spain and its produce. I understand the growers' rage. I can't understand why people are continuing to boycott the produce and even refuse to buy produce from elsewhere, like here. The stores are not helping. Paul bought a cucumber (a French cucumber) the other day and the price was not any cheaper than before this scare.
I spent Wednesday and Friday helping a friend move her stuff from one storage place that's closing down to another. It made me think that in the early days of Gameboy, I played Boxxle and the training paid off. I'm feeling a little sore, but I did nothing horrible to my back or shoulder; I could use a good massage, though.
On Thursday, she and I went for a little walk in the Bois de Vincennes. On the first lap around the Lac des Minimes we saw mama swan and her cygnets eating on the bank; on the second round they were cooling off in the water. There were also ducks and other water birds. I think I saw some geese. Thursday was a holiday in France (Ascension) and although Paris looks deserted, there were still enough people around to fill up the Bois. There were cars parked all along the road to Nogent and it looked like every row boat was out on the little lake. We had some ice cream at the food stand and people were waiting for seats, and then scrambling to find a place in the shade. It's a shame Paul's not feeling up to these walks any more.
Last week we had a real scare with the cat, Rocky. He didn't eat a thing over the weekend Paul made an appointment with the vet on Tuesday for the next morning. The vet ran a blood test and found that he had an infection in addition to general dehydration. They hooked him up to an IV, started antibiotics, and Thursday afternoon, we picked him up. He's old, for a cat. We can't just leave him under the care of the neighbors any more if we want to go anywhere for a few days; he's too needy. He's got his thyroid medicine twice a day, the antibiotic until tomorrow and he's very irregular as far as eating is concerned. We're down to half-can doses from 2 to 5 times a day. No more dry food (2 years already); no more fresh meat from the butcher or leftovers from us -- except the other day, he did manage to eat a little of my left over swordfish. We have to take him back to the vet for another checkup in about 10 days and I think we'll arrange another "hotel" stay with the vet so we can go to England. For a trip to Tours and St. Aignan, we'll ask one of the kids to come stay at the house for a weekend.