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Last summer, Patricia told us
about how much she likes
I almost did not photograph this
Great Blue Heron in
One of the many pretty
restaurants on boats on the
Newly replaced cattail lights on
the Pont Alexandre
III. |
Thursday, July 6 We
had a delightful dinner last night at the home of young, good-looking,
brilliant Parisian lawyers, François and Patricia, who will be staying in our
home on Sanibel from mid-July to mid-August.
There we learned many things, including the proper way to pronounce
“Champ de Mars” (one DOES pronounce the “s”!). I also was finally able to determine with
conviction that I am no longer allergic to scallops (“coquilles St. Jacques”). This is the second time now that I’ve eaten
them with no consequences. This is
fantastic news for me because I love all shellfish! Now I can add scallops to the list of
shellfish I can consume and enjoy.
Hooray! François
and Patricia have done lovely things with their apartment since last
year. There is a new oak bar
separating the kitchen from the living room, and the balcony has been turned
into a little wonderland of plants, screened off from the street with
lattice, and equipped with cool watering and misting systems. Their charming, big apartment is near ours,
and very near the Champ de Mars.
Everything about their apartment is organized and functional, as well
as attractive. François
and Patricia are, like our friends Ron and Elisabeth near Saint Sulpice,
aficionados of shopping at Picard, the master of frozen food. That is how one manages to have two careers,
three children, and still have the time to eat correctly and run an organized
household! If you don’t know about
Picard, check out the web site at http://www.picard.fr
. There is one near us at Place
Charles Michel. Tom and I will have to
check it out more seriously than we have in past summers. Our
plan, to personally protest the obnoxiously high euro, is to eat out less
often. That means cooking in, and
because the kitchen here is a tiny fraction of the size I’m accustomed to,
Picard may be just the place for us to shop. One
of the few issues on which I agree with Nicolas Sarkozy is the European
Commission’s euro policy. The
Commission has decided, inexplicably, that the high euro cannot be blamed for
poor export performance in While
I agree with Sarko on this issue, there is much about him that troubles me,
and I find myself feeling very sad that Ségolène Royal did not win the
election. Here’s an article from today’s International Herald Tribune that
explains some of the Sarko problem. I
was a little dismayed that François still thought I was a Sarko fan. I’m not.
Tom and I had decided that we really wanted Ségolène to win. But, alas, she just did not have good
enough support from the MEN in her party. François
and Patricia are so self-sufficient and smart that it is difficult to imagine
anything that we could help them with, other than tips about life in
southwest |
