It may seem very hard to believe, but today we were able to find a restaurant that had, so we were to believe, the ever popular, and potentially mythological OOFS in BUCKETS!!! Yes indeed. On this very important day, we sought out, confirmed, ordered, and ate ouefs en cocotte.

The day started as normally as most of the days we have had here. Doreen and Keith had arranged to go to the Flea Market (The Marche aux Puces, if you really want to know) and I had elected to stay home and write some letters, and basically catch up on my solitude. (I will write more about the Marche later. Doreen and I are planning on going there tomorrow, and I will have pictures and a full report. You can think of it as the largest yard sale in the world, and the yards that are getting sold from include both city hôtels and country chateaux. If you want a mustard pot from the 17^th century, or an absinthe spoon from the 19^th, you can find it at the Marche aux Puces. It is somewhat wearying for me, but I know that Doreen and Keith love that sort of thing. I will not deny that I like it as well, especially when taken in smaller doses, separated by a nice glass of wine and some cheese)

I spent a lovely morning reading (Balzac, of course) writing, and just randomly enjoying the fact that I was not working. (Sorry. It had to come our sooner or later. I really like not working. I think that I must have been a bum in a former life. Yes, I enjoyed working when I was doing so, and yes, I am sure that I will enjoy working once again when I start it up again, but I cannot say that I sit here every day and think: "Man. If only I was working, I could be filling out an expense account about now!" Or "I would really enjoy a confrontational phone call with one my creditors this morning!" But that is just me. I find that the great thoughts that I am apt to think when NOT working are just as interesting as the great thoughts that I am apt to think while working. So here I am, not working, and enjoying it.) As I had implied in an earlier e-mail, Doreen had discovered this restaurant (Les Fous d’en Face – which, she assures me, means The Fools Across the Street. I am not sure if that means that WE are across the street from a fools, that WE ARE the fools that someone ELSE is across the street from, or that the street is a fool for being run over all day by tired tourists. But one thing that I know for sure is that they were supposed to have Oofs in Buckets on the menu, and we were going to find out.

Doreen returned home about 1:30 PM (We only have one key to the apartment, and she said that if she was much later than 1:00 she would call and tell me where we would meet.) but she was Keithless! I did not know if they started arguing over who would be able to buy the best looking Art Deco sconce, or if they were fighting over some obscure Nabis artist that had lain undisturbed in the bottom of some Marche aux Puces stall for the past five years, but she was alone none the less. The truth of the matter was much more prosaic – they got separated on the train. It seems that one of the lines that they needed to take BACK from the Marche had broken down, and that Doreen had managed (because of all her time living in cities with tubes, metros, and subways) to get on a VERY full train, but Keith did not. She knew that he has been to Paris, and indeed, even the Marche, many times before so she was not really too worried about him. She proceeded home, and we had a glass of water and waited to see when Keith would show up.

Keith appeared about 20 minutes later, but would not come into the apartment until he was sure that Doreen was here. He was worried that he had "lost" her, and was not quite sure how he was going to explain that to me. It turned out that he did not see her get onto the train, and that he looked around that platform, did not find her, so he took the next train to the next change point, assuming that she would be there. She was not there, so he went BACK to the previous station, looked for her again, figured that she must be home, and then came on his way. What an excursion!

In any case, we sat in the apartment and thought about our oofs in buckets, and decided that it was time to seek them out. It was a beautiful day, and our fondest hope was that we would be able to sit outside with the oofs. We left the apartment, and headed in the Oofs direction.

Have I described the island where we are situated? It is the smaller of two inhabited islands in the Seine, between the left and right bank. The larger island is the one that olds Notre Dame, Ste Chappelle, The Conciergerie, and some other government buildings. Our island, Ile St Louis, was first inhabited in the 17^th century, and many famous people have lived here, including Marie Curie

But I will get to that in a later story. We took an hour and a half walk around the island to see all these sites.

Getting back to the Oofs in Buckets – we walked down to the Rue di Rivoli, which is a VERY busy street that you may be able to equate to Fifth Avenue in New York, or any other largely commercial, retail street. Few tourists walk here, because as a tourist you usually don’t really care about the local equivalent of a Crate and Barrel, or a Pier 1 Import. It is on our way to many things, though, so we see it all the time. This time, we were not exactly sure what street the Oofs in Buckets place was located, so we wandered just a bit before we saw it – Les Fous d’en Face.

This restaurant would be a great place to sit outside. Unfortunately for us, about 15 other people thought that before we did, so we went inside. The waiter (who was the Fou, I think.) came and put the Daily Special list one our table (This is one heck of a list. It is a chalkboard with all the specials written on it. Not small. The script was such that I could only recognize about six letters. But we knew what we wanted anyway).

The Oofs in Buckets were listed as appetizers (Entres are appetizers. Then you get a meat course and a fish course, and a cheese course.) and they had some great looking main courses. There a Pot au Feu (A meat stew) that I wanted, Doreen wanted a Chicken dish, and Keith was going to have Duck. So, being good patrons, when the waiter came by, Doreen and I each ordered our Oofs in Buckets, and then we tried to order our main courses. In each case, they were out of what we ordered (I think that they were trying to get us to order the specials) so we both ordered the duck. Keith did not WANT oofs in buckets (though I have no idea why he didn’t) and so just ordered the duck. We then asked for wine – which we usually get by the pitcher. The guy told us that this was a wine bar, and we they had no wine in pitchers. But we could order and expensive wine that wasn’t very good, or a cheap with that was quite good. We told him that we would take the latter (How many people do you think order the expensive, not very good wine?) and he left, saying, two oofs in buckets and one duck. Doreen looked at his order pad, and saw two oofs in buckets and one duck. We said, no, THREE ducks and TWO oofs. He nodded and walked away.

The waiter came back with the good, cheap wine, and told us that we could drink it as if by the glass. He they, in a combination of French, English, and pantomime, explained that the "pitcher" wine was wine that was left over from various bottles that are combined into one large bottle (I don’t really believe this, but it was funny at the time. Again, this fellow looked right at me as he was speaking the French. I would nod and say "mmmmmm" or "uh huh" when I thought appropriate, but could only guess what he was saying. I am not sure why these people don’t look at Doreen when they talk! I guess I look French.

Then the real moment of truth came – the oofs in buckets delivered to the table.

I will finish that story later.

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