Saturday, November 13, 2010

Friends ... Part 1

Dayton and Gaye arrived today!  It is so nice to have friends here to share the adventure.

When Diane heard my bicycle story last night, she immediately searched for listings of Paris street markets and found one which included “antique bicycle” sellers.

I headed out this morning before dawn in search of the Montreuil market, outside of the Peripherique ring road.  It supposedly opens at 7:00 AM, but I got there at 8:00 AM and the vendors were just beginning to set-up. 

Frankly, I am not too hopeful about finding an antique bike there, it really is a pretty lowbrow market where you can find maybe a used kids mountain bike, but not anything too exotic.  I did see a stuffed hedgehog for sale though.  I guess that is pretty exotic.

I dashed back to the apartment (stopping only for a quick pain au chocolate and café crème at my boulangerie) and we headed out to the airport to greet the Dayton and Gaye.  All went well.  We all piled into a taxi and went to their hotel.  Diane and I had reserved a minivan from Avis, but given our navigational challenges (and corresponding marital discord) we decided cancel the rental car to go the taxi route.  It went great.

Dayton and Gaye seem pretty happy and excited to be here.  They wear jetlag remarkably well.  We walked around their area a little (had lunch at Les Deux Magots), walked to the Notre Dame (bought crepes), went to Le Bon Marche (bought drinks) and went to our apartment (drank more drinks).  They managed to stay up past 8:00 PM, which is always a major challenge with jetlag.

Tomorrow, Greg and Lauri arrive, so we are headed out to the airport again to get them.  It went very smoothly with Dayton and Gaye today so we are doing exactly the same tomorrow as what we did today.

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