Pique-nique

Jen's sister Melissa arrived last week to kickoff nearly two months of consecutive visitors. Since many of you were afraid of the Parisian cold, we've only been occasional hosts up until now. As this was Melissa's first trip to Paris, Jen dutifully took her to the main sites: the Louvre, Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower. After a couple days of playing tourist, we decided on Friday evening that Melissa should get a dose of real French life. So with the weather ideal in the city and the crowds waning, we walked a few blocks to Champ de Mars park (where the Eiffel Tower stands) for an authentic pique-nique!

Well, the girls wouldn't let me buy foie gras, pates or anything else "weird", so we opted for a melange of items bought from the local market on Rue Cler. Jambon/fromage sandwiches, potato chips, cherries, a nice bottle of Riesling from Alsace and, of course, three tasty gateaux bought at our favorite bakery. We inherited the picnic set from our Dallas friends who were on a similar BCG program to Paris last year. We've been waiting to make some use of it and it was finally time to put it to the test!

There was also quite the melange of fellow pique-niquers. We saw a group of students playing guitar friends opening up boxes of wine (yes, even in France), strange couples intensely staring into each other's eyes and then making out, as well as some more mellow sunset watchers like us. The only thing we didn't see were other Americans - always difficult to do. It was a great local activity and something that our future visitors can expect to be on the schedule. As we were packing up and draining the last drops of Riesling, the Eiffel tower light up and sparkled on cue for its 10pm show. I had completely forgotten about it as the sun had set only minutes before. We played it off with Melissa that we really were pros at this touring thing and had planned it that way. Sometimes Paris just makes it easy on you.