We found ourselves at a sidewalk café. Hannah was distraught over leaving her sunglasses in the room, but no matter, it soon started to pour down rain on us. We took cover, and finished out our meals indoors.
Recharged and ready to go (or extra recharged in Hannah and Cedar’s case), we walked to Quai Branly, a museum that has a special “Tiki Pop” exhibit going on for a couple of weeks. If you know Chuck, you know he is the ultimate tiki collector. Why, you ask? We don’t know. For anyone who didn’t know that: a few years ago Chuck had an obsession with purchasing anything tiki from Ebay; mugs, platters, salt and pepper shakers, stir rods, bowls, plates, etc. It got a little out of hand, and well, we will just leave it by saying there are HUNDREDS of boxed up tikis in storage, and we don’t talk about this dark period of his life very often.
He would go around saying, “Well let’s see. We have that one, we have that one, I don’t think we have that one…”, and then would snap a photo of what he was missing from the collection. Sometimes he would admit to having 3 or 4 of the exact same tiki, and smile, like he was so proud of himself for it.
Chuck was like a kid in a candy store, and he couldn’t believe the exhibit wasn’t more crowded. He found the line for another exhibit (no, the tiki exhibit did not have a line), and wanted to go over to them and tell them that they “must be mistaken, the tiki exhibit was actually across the museum”. He found a room that was laid out to feel like a tiki bar from the 1960’s, complete with blowfish hanging from the ceiling. He took one look in the room and looked back at us with an awestruck look in his eyes, and the biggest grin we have ever seen on his face. He even came away from it all with his very own tiki notebook from the gift shop. It was a good day to be Chuck.
After the Arc, we walked down the Champs Elysees, which had some of the most fabulous shopping in the world, aka we just looked from the windows. After our feet gave out, we took the metro back to the apartment for a brief respite before dinner.
We headed out for, what we expected to be, a quiet dinner at a nearby restaurant. We were seated by a rude man and Barbs thought he was joking. He wasn't, but we gave him the benefit of the doubt. We were seated next to these elderly women who have lived in Paris for over 13 years. We got to talking with them and 10 minutes later, after we still had not been given the time of day at our table, they told us that the restaurant around the corner was indeed much better We made the choice to get up and leave the first restaurant at the ladies' suggestion, and never looked back. We ended up with one of our greatest meals of the trip, thanks
to those fine parisian women. Hats off to them.
Tomorrow we are going to Versailles. For all that Barbs has planned, we might be dead tomorrow evening and unable to post. Let’s all hope that doesn’t happen.
Until then!
--Hannah and Cedar