It has been hard to do much but hang out in the very comfortable apartment of our friend Edith in the 18th. Our routine has been: up late. Hang out. Leave the apartment by 3:00 or 4:00, … or 5:00. Late dinner at the apartment. Late to bed.

Nevertheless, we have managed to get out a few times. Friday, Pat and I walked the 2 1/2 miles to the Marais neighborhood to the Jewish Museum of Art and History, where we saw an exhibit on the photographs of Erwin Blumenfeld, fashion photographer.

Saturday, we went with Edith for dinner at the home of our friends Susy and Richard, who now live in the suburb of Ville d’Avray, easy to get to thanks to the excellent train system here. We got a tour of their beautifully renovated home, which includes Susy’s well-lit art studio.

Sunday, Pat and I got out early (shortly before noon) and went to the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, where we saw two exhibits—one of photographs of Paul Strand, a social documentarian (at least in this exhibit), and one of photographs of Cartier-Bresson and an associate, Helen Levitt, a New York-based photographer. The photos were from their independent trips to Mexico.

After the photography exhibits, we walked to the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Richelieu site, and walked in to the Oval Room, a beautifully restored public reading room, where rows of desks were occupied by what I assumed to be students doing research (most with laptops). Thousands of books line the walls along the periphery of the room. By sheer coincidence, as I was photographing some of those books, I noticed a fat volume, “Dictionnaire généalogique des familles du Québec.” In it, I found an entry for Simon Savard, an ancestor on the Savard side of the family who was the one who migrated to Quebec and made it possible for me to be writing these lines.

We wandered through exhibits in the museum of the library until closing, then headed back to the apartment for dinner with Edith.