15

Thursday, October 11th - our 15th Wedding Anniversary.  We have now been married about 1/3 of our lives.  That seems crazy to me! 

We spent the morning touring Notre Dame, then  walked over to the Ile St. Louis (one of the two islands in the Seine) and found a little cafe for lunch.  It started raining while we were there and it rained off and on the rest of the day.  After a long lunch (most meals in France were long, we found) we headed over to the Musee d'Orsay.  This museum was on my must-see list.  It is in a restored train station and houses some beautiful examples of Impressionist paintings, including Monet, Manet, Degas and Renoir. 

Again, it was fairly crowded but the layout of the museum made it seem much less crowded than the Louvre.  We stayed there for a few hours and bought prints of some of our favorite Van Gogh paintings.  I felt kind of bad - according to the audio tour, the paintings that we liked best were done during the period when Van Gogh was teetering on the edge of insanity.  I'm not sure what that says about us, but there you go.

Notre Dame:

 A statue of Joan d'Arc, inside the cathedral:

 Inside Notre Dame:

 Musee d'Orsay:

Thursday night was our big anniversary dinner.  To celebrate, we went to Guy Savoy, a restaurant in the Champs Elysee area of Paris.  I don't even know how to describe the it as anything other than a once in a lifetime experience.  We were there for over three hours; there were tables there that were there when we arrived and still being served when we left.  The food was amazing.

The cheese tray:

 Jay loves his fromage - as you can see:

 Here we are, 15 years later:

At dinner, Jay was acting weird.  It was more than just "I'm so happy to finally be eating this dinner that I've been planning for months".  I finally called him out and said he was making me nervous.  I seriously thought that he had some bad news to tell me - like, "hey, enjoy your dinner because I'm being reassigned to a new Utah State campus in Siberia for three years" or something. 

It turned out he was just excited because he had managed to surprise me.  About a year ago, I lost the main diamond in my engagement ring and so I haven't worn my rings since then.  I was sad about it but since diamonds can be kind of expensive I figured it would be a while before it was replaced.  Jay decided to replace the diamond before our trip and give me a new ring for our anniversary.  I was so relieved (that we won't be moving to Siberia) and happy (because I missed wearing my rings) that I started crying right there at the table.  He did good! 

Originally he was going to take me to the Eiffel Tower and give me the ring there but it was raining (again!) so we just headed back to the hotel.  It was the perfect end to a perfect anniversary.

Only one more day in Paris!