And a bunch of other fun and games.... Friday through Sunday, 26-28 October

It's so much fun to be able to give the special "Mariellen" tour to friends who hang around in Paris with me. For those who haven't been here before (or maybe have been just once or twice) it's a great chance to introduce them to special places and experiences and shops that they can't find in their tour guides.  And I even make them take the Metro and the bus!  Best of all, sometimes I get us lost or take us on a pointless errand.  Just try to find that in your Michelin guide!

And in the midst of all of this I fail to write my blog entries.  Like what happened on the last three days of this trip.  So here are just a few photos to fill in some of the blanks "sans" stories, finally posted almost six months later.  Just had to get these out there before writing about my April 2013 trip!

Linda T. and I went to the Louvre to view its overwhelmingly beautiful treasures.  We also got silly.  OK...I got silly and Linda took pictures!

I tried to strike the "ahoy there" pose
that seems to have been lost from
my favorite sculpture,
"Winged Victory of Samothrace"
(2nd century BC)

I attempted to compensate for the missing head
on this 22nd century BC statue
of Gudea, prince de Lagash, Mesopotamia

Linda T., Dale H. and I celebrated Dale's birthday in style at "Spring."  It included a 10-selection cheese course (off the charts brilliant!) and a long chat and digestif with chef/owner Daniel Rose while we were waiting for the taxi that never came.  Daniel remembered me dining there a couple years ago when I sat at the stools overlooking the cooking area - he even remembered that we had a chat about Al Franken!

Linda and I had dinner the next night at the also-impossible-to-get-reservations "Frenchie" restaurant, and before we left we had a chance to chat with chef/owner Gregory Marchand.  And I bought the cookbook he had just published.  And he autographed it!  Eating the food of two world-famous chefs and having chats with them two nights in a row!  Yikes.  What a thrill.

And on Sunday we hit a couple churches and the famous Saint-Ouen flea market (sorry, forgot to take photos of the flea market treasures, but we both brought a thing or two home with us!).

It was Reformation Sunday that week, and the preacher at
The American Church in Paris pointed out that statues
of various reformers ringed the pulpit.  I had never noticed!

We stopped by probably my favorite ancient
church, Saint-Severin in the heart of the Latin Quarter.
There has been a church on this site since the 5th
century, and the current building was started
in the 13th century.