Today it has been raining all day, at times quite hard.  We had made arrangements to meet another cousin of mine, Alexandre.  He lives in Montmartre and works there also.  He’s the age of our sons and is very interested in genealogy and I “met” him on the French genealogy website geneanet.  I was more than happy to meet him at his work as I am reading the book “The Only Street in Paris: Life on the Rue des Martyrs” by Elaine Sciolino.  The Rue des Martyrs starts a block from Alexandre’s work and so I got to explore the area from my book too.  He is a delightful man whose great-great grandmother Sarah was the sister of my great-great grandmother Marie.  I cannot tell you how cool it is to meet family that we have been separated from for almost 150 years.  I certainly hope that we continue to stay in touch.

After visiting for a couple of hours, Alan and I went out into the rain and debated whether we would walk down the Rue des Martyrs and see all the places mentioned in the book.  We decided to try it and if the weather became too wet, we would catch the Metro.  May I say that going down from Montmartre is certainly easier than going up.  Before we knew it, we had walked the whole length of the street.  We took the Metro home with no problems and dried out for a few hours.  After that we had dinner at an Italian restaurant down the street.  I am sure this is no surprise to anyone who knows how we love Italy.  Alan is now at the Irish bar down the block watching the Euro 2016 games and I am catching up on computer stuff.  No more pictures today as it was too wet to get the camera out of the back pack.  Tomorrow is the first game that Alan has a ticket for and if the weather is nice, we will go together to the Bois de Boulogne which are gardens out past the stadium where Alan’s game is.  http://en.parisinfo.com/paris-museum-monument/71494/Bois-de-Boulogne  We can then take the same Metro, he to the stadium and I will come back here to the apartment.  If it is raining, all bets are off and he will just go to his game.

The England-Slovakia game at the Irish pub down the street was fun because of the numbers of noisy Northern Irish and English fans, who seemed more interested in drinking and singing than in actually watching the game.  I (Alan) wound up standing next to a couple from Eastern Canada in their 50’s who were watching the game and marveling at the rowdiness of the crowd.  The game was a 0-0 tie, but who cared.  Looking forward to tomorrow.