Peter and Jeanette

Friday night Dave and I went into Paris for dinner with our friend Wally and his friend Marion (not to be confused with his girlfriend Marion). We hadn't seen Wally in a while and Dave was looking forward to practicing his French on him. I was too impatient to bother with my French and rambled happily in English.

Wally and Marion had just returned from London with brand spankin' new Doc Martens. Which, as it turns out, are not cheaper in England. Marion had a new camera (I think I mentioned in a previous post that Marion is a professional photographer) to fawn over and was reeling from a new gig she'd just lined up. When I sat down next to her she said "Great! If that girl from Aerosmith calls me back tonight you can talk to her because I have no idea what she was saying". Sooooo rock n' roll.

Anyway, we had sushi for dinner, and Wally gave us a photography 101 course on apature and ISO. He said "You should get Photography for Dummies". Which would have insulted me if I really wasn't a photography dummy.

On Saturday morning we cleaned up the apartment and I ran out to the chocolate shop. On the way back from the metro I noticed that a wedding was taking place at the Hotel de Ville of Levallois-Perret. At the next street corner I saw what at first I thought were butterflies, but in fact turned out to be paper hearts floating in the breeze-confetti from the wedding. I stood there for a full 10 minutes, watching the hearts fly past me like little birds. I know this sounds cheesy, but it was magical.
Around 3:00 we were awaiting Dave's Uncle Peter and Aunt Jeanette, who were visiting Paris for a few days from England. We had forgotten to give them the door code, so we had to keep sticking our heads out the window to make sure they weren't standing out there waiting for us in the rain.

They arrived soon enough and we gave them the tour of our apartment (took a whole 2 minutes) and made tea. Let me tell you, making tea for Brits is intimidating. As I have married into an English family I have made a few pots of tea, but it's not exactly something I have genetically programmed. Anyway, I'm exaggerating, Peter was really nice about instructing me about warming the pot, how many tea bags to use, when to add the milk.

We talked for a while, then decided to call Dave's parents to show off our guests. We put Peter and Jeanette in front of the computer and fired up Skype, then stood aside as they chatted with Roch et Sue.

Eventually we headed out to Paris for dinner at Comptoir de la Gastronomie, which I usually refer to as "The Duck Place". It's one of my favorite restaurants in Paris, so I thought I'd learn the proper name. At 7:00 we were the only people there, which was a little weird, but it filled up soon enough. We all had duck.

After dessert we decided to walk off the meal and started back to the Champs-Elysees, where Peter and Jeanette were staying. We started in Les Halles and worked our way to the Louvre and through the Tuileries Gardens. At Place de la Concorde we arrived just in time to see the Eiffel Tower sparkle.

We took the metro for the rest of the journey to the Champs-Elysees and said goodbye to Peter and Jeanette there. They were going to visit Montmarte today and I hope the weather was good for them in Paris. We had a lovely visit with Dave's aunt and uncle and I look forward to visiting them in England.