Category: Life

A Long Night’s Journey into Late Afternoon

Our Air France flight from SFO was quite pleasant – the crew was friendly, the food and drink were tasty, and we’d scored the best seats on the plane (1D and 1H – they give you a lot more room for your feet when you’re sleeping!). Unfortunately, there was another couple sitting in the seats when we got on the plane – they had 3D and 3H but claimed that they thought Row 3 was the first row on the plane. I think they were hoping to steal the better seats, but failed, though they did steal a bottle of water from Diane!

We took an unusual route across the Atlantic in that we actually crossed the Atlantic instead of following the great circle over Greenland and Iceland; despite that, we arrived in Paris a few minutes ahead of schedule. We were the first ones off the plane and the first ones to reach immigration, picked up our luggage, and caught the RER to Châtelet-Les Halles station, a five-minute walk from our AirBnb on Rue Saint-Honoré.

Our host, Rémi, met us and showed us the apartment (it’s small, cute, well-located, and has a view of the Louis Vuitton corporate offices). Our absentee ballots were waiting for us!

We did a little unpacking and headed out for a wander through the area. The Ministry of Culture building looked interesting, at least from the outside.

We’d stayed at an AirBnB a couple of blocks down the street back in 2013, so the area was familiar, but wanted to try somewhere new for dinner. Many years ago, I’d been at a W3C meeting in Paris with Tim Bray and he’d shared the secret of finding a good moderately-priced restaurant in Paris:

  • Find a corner with several restaurants
  • Pick the busiest one you can get into
  • Enjoy

Following his advice led us to Créperie Saint-Honoré. Diane had one of the smoked salmon crêpes and I had the suprême smoked salmon salad – with drinks, we spent 50 Euros and were quite pleased.

After dinner, we walked around a bit more and found a restaurant that I’m pretty sure we’re NOT going to try, although it had a very long line of people waiting to get in – Au Pied de Cochon (“At the Pig’s Foot”).

Exhaustion was setting in, even though we’d slept a bit on the plane (it was a short flight with long meals), so we headed back to the apartment for the night.

Early, but not often

Election 2024 is over for us – we faxed in our ballots this afternoon. Those of you in California may wonder how we voted so soon, since the ballots and voter packets haven’t even been mailed yet – suffice it to say that we fall into a special class of voter this year; the reason will become apparent over the next few days.

It was easy to make a choice in most of the races, starting at the top of the ballot, where both of us voted happily for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. But some of the downballot races, propositions, and initiatives were a bit harder to decide on; fortunately, we have a certified expert in the family – thanks, Jeff!

All of the forms we had to fill out made it abundantly clear that trying to cast multiple votes is a serious crime; good thing we won’t have another chance to vote this time around!