Friday, April 22 we finally got to spend time with our son, Philippe. Our time with him started a little later than we had planned because he got tied up with a work problem, but we will take any time we can get. We met him at the Porte de Pantin metro station and we went to the Parc de la Villette. He had bought tickets for us to see an exposition at the park that was all about balloons and inflatables. It was very unique and interesting. We were a little early for our timed entry, to we walked around this huge park a bit first.

After we left the exposition we took the metro to Châtelet. This is a very busy metro stop with a lot of trains. It’s crazy and I usually avoid it at all costs. Being with Philippe he knew exactly which train car to be on for the best position to get out by the escalator and get the heck out of there. There is a big Westfield Mall there that we cut through to get to the bar where he works. He’s a very busy guy, going to school and interning for a degree in IT, bartending and he’s a DJ. He made us drinks at the bar and then he made himself a special concoction that he made up. He poured us each a shot glass full of his drink and it was delicious, and potentially dangerous. It went down way too easy.

We went to a restaurant called Florida for dinner. We sat outside and watched the busy Friday night crowd in the area. Too soon it was time to walk back to the bar to pick up Jim’s bag because Philippe had to work.

Earlier in the day we went to the Carnavalet Museum, which is about the history of Paris. It’s a large museum and we didn’t get through the entire thing. We hope to return Saturday. We briefly went back to the apartment and then went down to the water nearby. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow so this was the last opportunity.

One more day to go in Paris. Even though I’ve been here 7 times for a total of about 50 days this has still not been enough time to see everything we wanted. Hopefully we will be back again some day.