Suddenly Last Weekend 2-20 & 2-21-16

This weekend was going to be a busy one for us but alas I was a little under the weather on Saturday so we stayed in until it was time to go to dinner at our friend's, Renaud & Francine Lambert, house. We were having dinner with them and also Francoise Leenhardt and Pierre-Yves Mauguen our other two friends in Paris.  It was to be an early dinner because Francoise and Pierre-Yves were leaving for a visit to Lapland in northern Finland early the next morning.  When we got to their house we still had about 10 minutes before we were supposed to arrive (damned Americans), so we walked down a couple streets and bought some flowers as a house gift.
Dinner was very enjoyable and the company was stimulating, engaging, and very convivial.  This is something that people who don't know the French can't fathom, they are warm and friendly people. The notion that Parisians are cold and arrogant may be true, but we have yet to see it and frankly we know many Americans who are cold and arrogant as well.   We laughed and argued and had generally a great time.  At the end of the evening we were over an hour later than Francoise and Pierre-Yves told us they had to leave and we could have carried on for a much longer time. Truth to tell I was the weakest link last night due to my indisposition earlier in the day.   We've been to two friends homes this year, Julia and Jose in Raphel, and Renaud and Francine here in Paris and we feel as if we're part of the family due to their many kindnesses.  That is the mark of a wonderful year.

Today, Sunday, we needed a small shopping to get us through Monday so we went over to our markets to pick up a couple things and to say goodbye.   We went to our cheese seller, Ferme de Chloe, where we were warmly wished a 'bon voyage' and  'a la prochaine fois' until the next time. Then we went by the butchers and wished them all the best as well.  Tomorrow we will go over to our baker and say goodbye to them. It's not without some wistfulness that we are leaving people with whom we've become familiars.  There were little gifts all the time, like 'try this little cheese, you'll really like it', that will never happen in the U.S. and we'll miss that.
After shopping we decided that we'd go out with a bang so we headed over into the 15th arr. and went to a brocante market.  The addiction is too great to fight, and we only have a couple days left,  So it was a long Metro ride with 2 connections but we got there relatively quickly.  A 5 minute walk had us at one end of the market, and we started down one side looking in every booth.  Deb came up with another couple couverts right off the bat so she was quite happy.   There was a little antiques shop located along the length of the market and they were open so I went in to look around.  I found a little print of Paris, by an artist whom we already have in our collection, and since it was next to nothing I picked it up as a little present for Deb.
On the way home we stopped to look at a medieval cloister located along our bus route where they were holding a small art exhibition.  We've wanted to see the cloister for quite a while and there was really no time to put if off any longer.