Have I mentioned the weather? Gray skies and rain seem to follow us and now they're back in Paris. We got caught in a downpour yesterday, one of those thunderstorms we don't have in California much, where it's hot and muggy and then the sky opens up with growling thunder and the crack of lightning. A bit early for a meeting, we ducked into the shop next door, where the young woman working there stood with us at the open door watching people scurrying by. She said she loved orages, thunderstorms, and looked very happy. Of course she was inside.

Yesterday morning we finally got to the Richard Serra installation at the Grand Palais. Five hugely tall steel monoliths in an offset row down the center of the long hall. When the light flooded in through the glass roof of the Palais the shadows thrown on the floor made the visitor walking through and around the steel plaques part of the installation. When clouds covered the sun, the whole thing went dead, I thought.


For dinner last night we tracked down the new incarnation of our favorite restaurant, which had been sold since we were last there. The owner/chef of Le Temps au Temps in the 11th are now operating Itineraires in the 5th on rue Pontoise. It's bigger, prettier, and a bit more ambitious and I don't think it succeeds as well. I guess we can't go back in temps. (sorry!)