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Friday 5th April 2024

Friday 5th April 2024

7788/20729
After that annoyingly disturbed night, we took it fairly easy in the morning and then just before lunch took a walk over to the Louvre to show the kids some art. As we walked I reminded Catie of the last time we'd been going to the Louvre and the man who had tried to do the ring con on us (where he pretended to find a ring and then offered to give it to us, presumably eventually in the hope of some reward). 
We laughed at the memory and then as we walked along the banks of the Seine saw a guy trying exactly the same thing. He didn't even really try to hide the fact that he was palming it, but caught my eye with a look of cartoon surprise at his discovery. I didn't stop for a chat this time and doubt it was the same man. The con must work enough times for this to be a profitable enterprise over many years (it's mentioned as a con in Dickens apparently, so greedy idiots have always been susceptible to the chance of some easy, if clearly fake gold.
We got to the gardens of the royal palace that was burned down in the Paris Commune - a story that beguiled our Titanic obsessed son- and we think we ended up having lunch in the same cafe that we dined in on the 9th of April 2012, when we were two days into our marriage. Now we had doubled in number and somehow one of us had put up with the other for nearly 12 years (I mean it's 16 really - not sure why marriage is seen as the main benchmark). We haven't done badly. Well, I haven't done badly. And one out of two isn't bad.
We'd booked for the Louvre, of course, but made the mistake of thinking we'd be waltzing in there at 2, exactly when we arrived, rather than being stuck at the back of a huge queue of people who were also going in at 2. But eventually we got into the pyramid and had an enjoyable afternoon of looking at Roman, Greek and Egyptian artefacts and seeing the Venus de Milo (which I'd forgotten I'd seen last time) and then finally trudging back all the way through the museum to see the Mona Lisa. Again I felt sorry for the paintings that got ignored just cos they got to be in a room with this main event - was it really the best painting? No, I'd argue, if I was one of the other paintings. But they'd all done well to make it here. 
Even more impressive the room had a fair few very beautiful living women in it, but no one was looking at them (well I must have been to notice, though obviously the main one was my wife), and instead beguiled by a pretend image of a woman who was long dead, which is not as good, no matter how cheeky her smile.
Phoebe got some photos and adapted the painting to make it better. I like hers best.
It's been a lovely few days in Paris - we didn't intentionally time this to go with our anniversary (or we'd have been in Paris on Sunday rather than in Disneyland) but it did give us time to reflect on these dozen years. 



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