May 4…. (a little late)

May the 4th be with you…

Happy Birthday Jill!

The day dawned bright and sunny and we looked forward to a lovely day in Paris.  The Peniche had a notable list to starboard, and we found out why when we left in the morning; the river had risen overnight, and the ramp from the shore was now sloping down to the shore and pressing on the starboard side!

Our carefully laid plans to meet Carol at La Coq Rico began to go awry almost immediately.  We left with lots of time to spare, or so we thought.  It turns out that the recent rain has caused a bit of a high water situation on the Seine, which caused the list on the peniche, and several Batobus stations were submerged.  The upshot of this was that our station was only being served once per hour, instead of the 20 minute interval we expected, and it would not be stopping at the station we had planned due to its unexpected submergence.

We altered out plans enroute, and thought we would still make it in time, but the metro station we went to was closed for renovation. We gave up on the metro at that point and just hired a taxi. However, the taxi driver had no idea where we wanted to go, so we just got him to drop us near the the metro station we wanted to go to anyway.  I had noted that the fare meter said 10.30€ and thought it quite reasonable.  It wasn’t until two hours later when discussing our trio with Carol that we discovered that Jill, who had been in the front seat, hadn’t been able to see the meter, so just trusted what the driver told her which was 20€.  She’s a bit pissed off at herself.

Jill cheated a bit and used her phone’s GPS to get us there expeditiously, and we only ended up being 10 minutes late.

 

The restaurant we were at was all about chicken.  Being in the chicken business, we were curious as to what a chicken centric restaurant might have to offer.  We were amazed to see “cau-nu” on the menu.  This translates to “naked neck” which is one of our heritage breeds.  Of course we ordered that bird and it was excellent.  Not as tender as the typical meat bird, but very flavourful and well worthwhile.  Ru-chan had the Chicken macaroni and cheese, Miwa had the brioche french toast.  All the food was excellent.

Feeling guilty about our gluttony a lunch, we all walked for the next hour and a half, visiting the fabric district and generally heading toward home.  Along the way we unwittingly passed through Paris’ version of the Downtown East Side.  Super sketchy with lots of homeless people.  It was only once we got back that we realized what we had done.  Ah well, we survived.

We paused for a beer at a converted factory on the banks of a canal (Point Ephemere), then hopped the metro for home.  About the time we headed for the metro it began to rain.  By the time we arrived at our station it had become a downpour.  Fortunately it was a short walk and no one melted.

Dinner was a simple salad with leftover chicken and a solitary bottle of cheap wine.  I tried to get the girls to sleep a bit earlier, but they didn’t fall asleep until 8:30.  We’ll get them up early tomorrow to try to get back on the 7pm schedule.