Lost and Found Department

Instead of 'Here is Metropole's Club' the awning
says 'Salles for Groupes.'

Memorize This and Then Swallow It

Email from Tim Stanton. Sent via the Internet: Friday, 18. May 2001:-

Dear Ric

I was sitting here lamenting a couple of unfortunate things about my recent trip to Paris, and thought I would finally write to you.

The first thing I am lamenting is the fact I'm here on my couch instead of still in Paris. I also wish I'd written you before my trip so I would have remembered where the Café Metropole Club is located so I could have attended a meeting. Lastly I lament the fact that we never made it to the Café Metropole Club to have our membership cards officially validated!

My wife and I made our first trip to Paris in the first week of March this year for my 40th birthday. After reading about your confusion on when March actually started, I checked my plane tickets - we left Madison, WI on Wednesday, 28. February and arrived at CDG on Thursday, 1. March. Fortunately it was only a one day flight!

We got to our apartment on Ile St. Louis around noon without incident and decided to wander around some before heading to the Café Metropole Club at 15:00.

We had a good time ordering our first lunch in a language not our own - I think we even got what we ordered! Then we strolled down Ile de la Cite, crossed the river and headed towards the Louvre - because I recalled from your website the location of the restaurant was on the river near the Louvre.

Well, anyway we ended up at an intersection with a restaurant on one corner, and the Louvre on the other side of the street.

Now you have to understand, I'm the guy usually good with directions, but all the same, when learning to fly, the tower had to remind me that home was to the east and I was heading west.

So there I am standing on the corner with my wife a little after 5 pm and I'm thinking, 'Gee, I haven't seen anything that looks like the building in the picture on Ric's website.'

I wasn't bright enough to have brought a map, or even written down the address, merely depending on my ailing memory. So there I was, standing about two feet from the door - that upon checking when back at work, was the door I was looking for - I thought, 'No map, address or clear recollection of exactly where the place is,' so I decided to just visit the Louvre and be done with it.

I really enjoyed the museum, but I'd told my employees to look at your webpage the next day so they would know I made it safely across the Atlantic.

I wanted to have Madison, WI named the 'City of the Week' - instead of 'Weak of Mind' - I wanted to talk to other like-minded people about what we should see or skip on our first trip abroad. I can't believe I screwed this up!

At least I now know where to go on my next trip to Paris. We had such a great time there we must go back! We've never drunk so much good wine and Champagne in our lives! We didn't try the métro until late in our trip when our feet were about to drop off because everything we saw while walking was so interesting.

Apparently the weather then was about the same as it's been since we left. I would like to see the city later in the year when the foliage is more mature. Even so, I took a lot of pictures. When I returned home I spent about a week scanning and creating a web site of my vacation photos. I wonder if you might take a look?

PS - Monona, Wisconsin is my hometown. It is a suburb of Madison, which was the only place on earth I've felt was worth living in - until I visited Paris.

It seems everything Parisians do in Paris is done extremely well. Of course it helps if you have a couple of thousand years to get it right!

About my Web site URL above, I might be adding a page in the future, to offer posters of the Louvre's glass pyramid and/or a short book containing most of the pictures taken during the trip.

Regards,
Tim Stanton

Bonjour Tim -

Sunday, 20. May 2001:- This terrible schmozzle is all my fault, because I originally signaled the date of this particular club meeting as Thursday, 29. February - having forgotten that in this new and more modern third millennium, weird Februarys have been suspended in 2001.

Observant readers and club members immediately sent me 'nitwit!' emails and a correction was made, most likely while you were in mid-air during the first Transatlantic flight in your life.

I have had unconfirmed reports that other prospective club members have come within a whisker of the clubhouse in the café La Corona without spotting it for what it obviously is. Some other 'to-be' members have also come on Wednesdays, and others - totally jet-lagged - come on the right day but six hours too early.

If I thought I could get a movement going, I'd call for the suspension of all Februarys - including the weird ones - and propose making the world into one time zone, like it is on the Internet. But I want no tilted windmills, so to heck with it.

The weekly club 'reports' used to be accompanied by a weekly club 'page' containing all the unnecessary 'rules' and vital 'facts' about the club's location, date, time, métro-stop names, but this was so boring it became a page called 'About the Club,' which is still around here somewhere.

Rather than put in the URL for this boring page, this page, here, has some old photos of different views the club's café La Corona for all prospective members to memorize.

If, by chance, you forget them after you memorize them and find yourself in a café in Paris you think might be the club's - if it contains either or both of the club's two 'Waiters of the Week,' Patrick and Monsieur Ferrat - you are probably in the right place. Either or both Patrick and Monsieur Ferrat can tell you if it is the right day and time.

Two new members - so close, so far away - not booked into the club's membership booklet is a definite disappointment for me and all of the other members. But your email makes it sound like Paris suited you well enough - and that's the main thing.