Shopping and Champagne With Friends

 We got a late start to the morning. Ira wanted to visit a few furniture stores, but we only made it to one. It was a glorious one, however, Galerie Patrick Sequin.

There, we chatted with a lovely young woman and admired works by Jean Prouvé. (They also had some amazing Charlotte Perriand furniture.

Here are a few of my favorite things from this visit, though I would love to have anything here. These are mostly aluminum pieces, as Prouvé was often designing for tropical climates and aiming for mass production. The "light wall" was originally just open to let tropical breezes flow through, but it's been converted to a light source.

The gorgeous space was done by another favorite architect, Jean Nouvel. I should have taken a picture of the elegant interior, but here's an exterior view that shows the rigor and beauty of the design.

We had lunch at an old favorite, Ma Bourgogne, in the Place des Vosges. I had a lovely steak frites, while Ira enjoyed his salmon with frites as well. They always treat us nicely here. We had a lovely outside table right below the heaters, so we were toasty and warm.

Here's a picture of Louis XIII, who graces the place.

And finally, we had a terrific, if chaotic time with old friends who have a lovely apartment on rue Montorgeuil.

When I say chaotic, it's because the conversations were held in both French and English. Annie and Bernard are legitimately old (92 and 93 respectively) and therefore there was a lot of back and forth. My French is not the better for not having gone to Paris for three years, and the same could be said for Bernard's English.

We had champagne and a fig tart. There was much slow going back and forth for glasses and dishes and whatnot. It was a treat. This may be the last time we see them, so it was an especial pleasure to talk about our lives and the world. They traveled the world because of Bernard's work as an engineer, plus Annie was raised in Vietnam, so they have a broad, international view of life.