The Luxembourg Gardens and Saint-Sulpice on Father's Day

Ed got Father’s Day greetings from Jean and Peg via my e-mail this morning., We walked to Paul’s for breakfast and it is much changed. The front room is now a coffee bar and standup only. A second back room has been added, quite elegant, and it serves the same delicious hot chocolate we remembered. We were eating our breakfast and a jolly man sat down beside us and asked where we were from. We told him and quickly learned he was David and lived in Paris half the year and some retirement place in Florida the other half. He’s a retired architect and very chatty. Fortunately, he’s a most pleasant 80-year-old gentleman and we enjoyed talking to him. We did discover our favorite waitress (the grumpy one) has retired. He attended her retirement party. I must admit we missed her. She was grumpy but very efficient and when you got her to smile, you knew you had accomplished something.

After breakfast, we walked over to the Luxembourg Gardens to see if the “Josephine” exhibit is still on. It lasts until the end of the month so we’ll go soon. We continued around the Luxembourg Gardens and then walked back through the gardens heading for church. There were a lot of joggers in the gardens on a Sunday morning.

We walked back to St. Sulpice where the organist plays for fifteen minutes before Mass. Today was the last Mass of the school year so we had scouts marching in with flags and all sorts of ceremony. It was quite exciting. After Mass there was a marvelous forty-minute organ recital and then we walked around the Poesie Festival to La Bastide d’Opio where we had a lunch reservation. The waiter asked if we enjoyed the recital so he remembered us from yesterday when we stopped in to make the reservation. We got the 13.90 euro lunch menu. Ed had the magret de canard and I had the fork-tender lamb. Both were excellent. Ed got crème brulée for dessert and I got the hot (very hot) chocolate cake with ice cream, both delicious.

We walked back to the Luxembourg Gardens where they’ve taken out a lot of trees and are planting new ones. We visited the 1914-18 WWI exhibit in front of the Sénat. This is the 100th Anniversary of World War I; hence, the exhibit. You can walk on it and there were families exploring with their children. I'm sure there were a lot of history lessons that morning.

We followed our ears to a piano recital. A gentleman was playing Chopin on a beautiful Bosendorfer grand piano in the park so we found a bench to enjoy Chopin in the gardens for a while. Around four o’clock we walked back to St. Sulpice for their afternoon organ recital which was spectacular.