View of the Eiffel

As I suspected, my friend Larry has a very tacky apartment in Paris. It only has a view of the Eiffel Tower, a balcony with flower boxes, a huge bathroom and fully equipped kitchen. I'm suffering.
As I also suspected, Larry (AKA Marathon Man) led me on at least a five-mile walk today. It rained much of that time, but he provided umbrellas. We walked to the Marais, the Latin Quarter and Place de Vosges, which is a lovely large courtyard off the beaten tourist path. We had the most delicious fish lunch there and then trekked over to Notre Dame.
Almost everything is closed here this weekend because of May Day, which is a national labor holiday. Paris is amazingly empty and quiet.
I got here five hours late yesterday. We sat on the tarmac in Chicago for two hours while maintenance worked on what was described as "an item" on the aircraft. Then, maintenance discovered another "item" and the plane was taken out of service. We de-planed and waited for another aircraft, which materialized about an hour later. Thunderstorms delayed our departure for another two hours. We didn't take off for Paris until 10:45 p.m. Friday. Poor Larry had to come to the airport twice yesterday. The positive side of this story is that I was able to sleep for several hours on the plane and I didn't have the usual jet lag.
More later...