“Together in Paris”

“Together in Paris” is what was written on Anastasia’s necklace in the Disney movie. And though we didn’t come from Russia, we did meet up with a childhood friend of mine in Paris. F and I came from Germany and R and her husband came from England to meet up at R’s parents’ apartment.

As for our Parisian exploits, in some ways you could say we were not your typical tourists—we didn’t go on any tours, we did not go inside Notre Dame (though we did take a picture in front of it), climb the Eifel Tower or go to the Louvre.

Instead we wandered around the city by ourselves, gawked at some lovely mostly-empty churches a few blocks away from Notre Dame and ate escargot at a street café. (These poor snails had apparently failed their swim test..if there is such a thing—for snails—in garlic butter…)

We also went to a museum, but one that was much less crowded: the Musée Rodin. F and I had both studied him in Music Civ. and we enjoyed seeing his statues ‘in person’…if you can say that about statues. Some of them were ..less-than-clothed and they didn’t exactly maintain ‘Book of Mormon distance’ (*for explanation see below), so Freud might have had something to say about Rodin, but that’s neither here nor there.

F also railed on Haussman’s Parisian reforms because new is not always purely improvement on the old…but that’s another story. (See Wikipedia for more info.) Anyway, we enjoyed Paris in our own way.

(*explanation for the phrase ‘Book of Mormon distance’: there is a habit at church dances of adult leaders advising youth between the ages of 14 and 18 to ‘maintain a Book of Mormon distance’ between themselves and their dancing partner during a slow dance—in order to keep things P.G. Let’s just say that Rodin must never been to an LDS church dance…)