Groove is in the Heart: The France Epic: Gay Paris

On our last day in Paris I wanted to squeeze in one more museum... the little house on La Place de Furstembourg is one of the places Delacroix is known to have lived in Paris and it houses a lovely collection of both his own works - some of which are on loan from the Louvre - and works from his own collection by artist-peers of his time. It is a small affair, needing no more than two hours to get through completely, and it was a great way for me to round out my art-hungry appetite.

Afterwards I met up with K, who had been working with her camera nearby. We bought some lovely prosciutto-like meat, some cheese, fresh bread and fruits and walked down to the Seine and had lunch together. I really like sitting by the Seine in that area, because all the those enormous tour boats slow down to almost a stand-still so that the hordes on board can have a three minute view of one side of Notre Dame (albeit a very good side of it...) before moving on. They're like bugs in glass containers. My favorite boats are the dinner boats, with their hokey French dinner music quartets. They come right up alongside us and park for awhile and we get to just sit there, drinking our beer and looking them over in their little glass case.

Picture Perfect Evening

Anyway we took the Metro back to Maubert to get ready for dinner with Deborah (see below for details of that meal...). As we were coming out at our metro stop we were hit by pounding bass vibrations. They had closed Blvd. St. Germain for the Annual Gay Pride parade.

Um, yea, I'm from San Francisco, I've been to the Castro numerous times both during and not during the Halloween festival there, and, um yea... they're pretty gay here in Paris. We had a dinner date to get ready for but couldn't do anything except stand there mesmerized by the procession of open, flat-bed cargo trucks that had been converted into themed, traveling dance floors. One after the other passed us by. More than just a gay pride event, there were people from every walk of life celebrating and dancing in the streets. Twas cool.