Buckets of Buddies and Bonuses! - Thursday, 25 October

Linda enjoying her
first café crème at
L'Entracte, just outside
the Paris Opera

This morning my second-oldest friend in the Twin Cities, Linda T., arrived in Paris to hang out with me for a few days.  (I met Linda in 1973 when I moved to the Cedar Grove subdivision of Eagan and went to the tiny Cedar Grove Baptist Church, just over a hill from my apartment, where she and her family were very active members - I made so many good friends there and I became "Auntie Jake" to her kids!)  Linda has talked about getting the "Mariellen Tour" of Paris for several years, and now was finally able to make it happen.

And, double bonus, my old pal Dale H. is in Europe on business - he was scheduled to fly back to the U.S. from Spain today, but an Air France strike prevented that so he took the train up to Paris and is going to hang out with Linda and me tonight.  It's his birthday tomorrow, so we even get to toast his new year in person! And triple bonus, we get to do so at Spring restaurant, where I was able to get a last-minute reservation this afternoon when someone else cancelled (almost unheard of - Spring is one of the hottest restos in town)  Check out my story about the place in this post from 2010: Spring Restaurant