Thursday, October 25, 2007

A wonderful afternoon, followed by a ridiculous day

Hi everyone. Yesterday was Wednesday, and I just worked half the day, then had the great pleasure of meeting some of my mom and Harry's friends in Paris! We had been planning this for awhile and finally the day came where I could have a long visit, dinner and great company with fellow Americans! I met Jennifer and her husband Todd at le Musee Marmottan, mainly a Claude Monet/Impressionism museum, which is my favorite! Jennifer works as a lawyer in Sacramento with Harry and Todd is a lobbyist for a Biotech company (and lobbies for the support of medicine and medical treatments for cancer patients, etc). They were soooooo nice and so much fun to visit with. Right away they greeted me with a gift from my mom that she sent with them! So that was fun. I LOVED the museum, which houses all of the Water Lillies paintings, Giverny paintings, etc. WOW words can not describe how beautiful and great they are...and the paintings are much larger than I anticipated and set up in a sequence to follow. It was sooo cool to see them up close and how "blotchy" the paint is, and so colorful. And then when I walked to the other side of the room and looked back, the paintings were SO CLEAR. Wow, I loved it. I was in heaven. And they got us all "audio guides" so I learned more than I knew before about Monet and the method. Anyways....we then took the metro to the area of le Palais Royale.....wow I LOVED the neighborhood, it is soo chic and trendy and Parisian. We passed the restaurant that is featured in the movie "Something's Gotta Give" with Diana Keaton and Jack Nicholson (at the end of the film she eats here with her bf, Keanu Reeves, and then Jack comes to get her back). Anyways the restaurant looked sooo amazing inside and there was a small poster of the movie in the window. Then we walked to Willy's Wine Bar, which Jennifer had picked out before. It was so cute. So we started with a bottle of red wine and a plate of cheese and bread. Before they started to serve dinner we left to walk around the nice garden at le Palais Royale...WOW AGAIN. The boutiques had such great art, jewelry, shoes, clothes...all haute couture with pieces over 1000Euro, etc. It was so much fun, and they showed me a restaurant they had eaten at, which is a tie/jacket/dress place...that "cost me a paycheck" according to Todd. :) Anywho, we returned to Willy's Wine Bar for a MAGNIFICENT dinner, including more red wine and bread. I had steak and potatoes (but the best I've ever had with great flavor), and they ate ocotopus and lamb. Let's just say I was VERY appreciative for the company, experience, and generosity. It was also quite nice to drink glasses of wine and be with adults. :)

I will try to get some pics up soon. Today was not a very good day, but no need for details. Tomorrow night I am officially on a 10 day holiday!! Stacey arrives in the evening from Italy, then we're going to have a fun dinner with my friend Ashley and her boyfriend in her apartment. Then we'll spend the rest of the weekend site-seeing in Paris!

A bientot!

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