had lunch with sandra & sara at” le timbre”, the restaurant near luxembourg gardens and vavin metro. the chef is british. (i've written about this restaurant already - but "le timbre" means postage stamp and it is a tiny restaurant). we all ordered the "rouget" - red snapper on top of mashed potatoes and it was excellent. sandra said it might have been one of the best meal she’s had in paris! it was delicious and the white rhone wine they recommended went just right with it. we also all had the home made "mille feuille" - napolean for dessert. that was fantastic too. just 3 pastry wafers with pastry cream between them. it was an indulgence for me. when we were leaving, i asked the chef what the special subtle taste was in the mashed potatoes. he said it was just parsley, but i had tasted something almost nutty. he said with a little embarrassed look, “well, it had a LOT of butter”. god. if a chef calls it a lot of butter, it was probably insane amounts. not good for the cholesterol, i’m afraid. and that, in addition to the dessert...
during lunch, sara told us about her son’s first day at his internship. he was working with an architect too. the architect called last week to say that he had to go out of town, “on-site” at his architectural project. he said that the son could go with him. they agreed to meet at the train station early monday morning. she had told us about this before, and we asked if she had ever met this man, who would take her 14 year old son to a remote corner of france. she had not, and she got a little nervous... anyway, she figured she’d meet him that morning and make any assessments. she told her son to be all packed and ready to go monday morning at 8:30 and to have the architect’s phone numbers. monday morning at 8:00, the son asks the mom, “where are the suitcases?” “what!? i told you that you had to be all packed and ready to go!” so they went down into storage to get the cases and were late arriving at the train. they did not have train tickets but knew at which carriage to meet him, but they couldn’t find him. she asked the son for the phone number, but he had only taken the HOME phone number. the son got on the train and the train left the station as she scrambled to call her husband to find the number. her son called to say that he was asked to leave his seat because it was a reserved seat of someone else. luckily, her husband found the email and the cell phone number. she got hold of the architect who was in the dining car getting a coffee, and he apologized to her. it all was fine in the end, but what stress watching your son leave on a train like that! the kids are still kids, but hopefully, they are learning to be more in charge of themselves.
marianne left today and her older son, eric will come over to stay. libby and he will leave in the wee hours of tomorrow morning (5am) to catch the bus to the airport in beauvais where they have cheap flights back to parma. libby is going to travel with eric around a few cities in italy. it has been so enjoyable spending time with libby and getting to know her. she has felt like a younger cousin to me and an older cousin to jj. it was cute to see them go off together shopping and hear them planning rendezvous after jj got off of work. she has invited jj to go visit her on her own, in parma sometime.
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