Catchy headline, but we were coming back to Paris anyway. Jerome, the cruise director, met Franz, the guy who found the phone, somewhere close to where our boat moored in Paris tonight and wonder of all wonders, Doug is now in possession of his phone. What are the odds of dropping a phone in the street in a small town in France and actually coming in to possession of it again in Paris? Doug is ecstatic, but I am pretty thrilled as well. He has been annoyingly using my phone to take pictures for the past four days. I gave him the security code, but he doesn’t always want to bother so he sticks the phone right in my face for face recognition, which drives me nuts. I would have grabbed it from him and thrown it into the Seine, but that would have only made our situation worse.
Today we visited Napoleon’s Chateau Malmaison, the translation being “evil house.” The French version sounds much more poetic, doesn’t it? Malmaison was the home of Josephine and Napoleon until he divorced her in 1809 because she did not produce any heirs. Josephine continued to live in the house until she died in 1814, and she still maintained the title of Empress Josephine.
Our tour guide was a tiny, birdlike little woman named something like Coco with a funny way of using various expressions. For instance, she said that Napoleon didn’t care for Paris because it was too “crappy.” So, in 1804 when he crowned himself Emperor, he began a series of improvements to the city’s sewer and water supply. Coco obviously meant that Paris was literally crappy, because before Napoleon there was raw sewage in the street. Coco also said that Napoleon liked his women “smelly” and didn’t like Josephine to bathe. Make of that what you will.
About half of the furniture is original to the house and the other half is original to the time period, but not necessarily to the house. The red tented bed is actually Josephine’s bed, and the harp and piano are original. I kind of lost the thread after that because many of the rooms were small and stuffy and we were crammed into them, so it made it hard to focus on what Coco was on about. I was fascinated by the red velvet chairs with the white swan arms. Notice that swans are also woven into the carpet. The swan motif shows up again on Josephine’s bed and several other places, so I guess she had a thing about swans.
When Doug lost his phone and Jerome tried to help him find it in Auvres, it delayed our bus and I got a lot of dirty looks and sighs from our fellow travelers. Today, Doug failed to get on the bus at exactly the right minute it was due to leave, and I turned around and said to our fellow travelers, “So sorry, all.” Silence and more dirty looks. I have vowed to myself that I will never, ever act like a crotchety old person. I give my daughters full authority to warn me if I show any signs.
This our last night on the river cruise. Tomorrow morning, we get up bright and early to catch a cab to the train station, where we will hop on a high speed train to Barcelona. So we must say au revoir to our shipboard friends, Laurel and Kevin (Florida) and Sherrie and Fred (Texas). Oh, and new friends tonight from DC, Yasmin and Hussein. We all exchanged phone numbers, so we will see how that works out. There are also some people on board who I am glad I don’t have to see again, so I say “Bon debarras” to them.
Coming into Paris tonight:
A. Roam of My Own: Travels With Annie 
I’m sure you are so glad Dad got his phone back! Sharing a phone and having him stick it in your face to unlock it was probably getting quite tiresome. Sounds like Napoleon’s house was pretty neat—I wonder if he named it the “Evil House,” or if French people named it that later? Kind of interesting to think about. 🤔
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