The Sun Also Sets

Do you know what happens at night in Paris? It gets dark! Who knew? As far as I have been able to see, the sun is shining when I wake up, and we have to close the blinds against it when it is time for bed. I am a northerner by nature, but these summertime latitudinal effects are nuts. But we got to start this week right at midnight last Sunday. We had been out late whooping it up at a big oyster dinner with some friends in the 1ere on Saturday night, and we didn’t leave until all the mollusks and wine were gone. If there had been a keg, we would have just been sucking foam. That gave us the opportunity for a lovely evening stroll under the streetlights.

There was a fair set up in the Jardin de Tuileries, with a ferris wheel, so we indulged Daphne with a ride. I rode with her while Nancy stayed below to keep my cigar burning. Daphne and I had great views of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, all lit up. Naturally, one 10€ ride wasn’t enough, and she had to throw a little fit... you know how she is. On the way home from the fair, Daphne finally got to see the “freak out” lights on the Eiffel Tower. Every once in a while, instead of just the rotating spotlight at its summit, the Tower starts flashing and shimmering all over. That distracted her enough to stop crying.

Our other adventure for the week was to visit Orléans. What better way to celebrate the 4th of July — the anniversary of American independence from Britain — than to visit the city that Joan of Arc made famous by taking the first step on the road to French independence from Britain? On Thursday, we hiked down to Gare Austerlitz to catch the once-an-hour train, and we covered the 120 km to Orléans in just under an hour. The town was easily walkable, and we wandered the medieval streets, explored the cathedral, visited the house where Ms. d’Arc stayed, and soaked up the provincial culture along the Loire River. It was a fun day that we capped off with dinner at MacDöner and getting caught in the rain trying to walk across the bridge over the Loire.
The girls had more adventures on their own, which included visiting the crown of thorns at Notre Dame, but I spent the rest of my days this week with my nose to the grindstone in the Zootheque. I finally finished going through all of the specimens of Anodonta and Pseudanodonta, identifying which are types (or at least potentially type specimens) and getting them ready to bring over to the malacology department to photograph them for the MUSSEL Project Database. I found the types for about 150 nominal species, and now they are all dusted and labeled and ready to see the light of day. They will have to wait, though, until I get back from Senckenberg Museum. This Sunday I will be meeting Kevin and Katie in Frankfurt, Germany where we will be making the last of our several museum visits on the grant that we were awarded in 2003. It will be the end of an era.