A five euro tab for café creme, croissant and fresh squeezed orange juice beat the hotel’s 15 euro charge for a full breakfast that included a rubbery plain omelet and cold pancakes, and we are off to the Musée des Arts Forains (The Fairground Art Museum). According to the English language handout, actor and antique dealer Jean Paul Favrand has been collecting and restoring objects from the fairgrounds and amusements mostly from the Belle Epoque period (I think I like writing Belle Epoque, don’t you?). Carolyn had discovered it on one of her layovers, and took me on a subsequent trip, but I was keen to show the quirky and charming museum to Carol now (an expression of a very rare desire to actually visit a museum).

If you want a visual, picture a 600-pound tuna flopping into your tiny rowboat, and it and you and your companions trying to flop it out again.

   The result is a 90-minute ticketed tour of carousels, bedecked mechanical figures that sing and dance and intrigued the little ones that dominated our tour (apparently, it was spring break for Paris schools). There were early 20th century boardwalk attractions like skee ball games that mimicked a horse race, which the kiddies flocked to play.

   The carousels are meant to be ridden, and one in particular is propelled by the riders themselves upon replica penny-farthings, those high-wheeled bicycles popular in the (here it comes again) Belle Epoque. If that description sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve seen it depicted in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.

   What you won’t see in any Woody Allen movie, but maybe a Mack Sennett farce was me trying to board one of the small sit down boats in another carousel. With my better judgment being overruled by an insistent guide, I managed to climb in and out again without serious injury to myself or my fellow victims-at-sea passengers. If you want a visual, picture a 600-pound tuna flopping into your tiny rowboat, and it and you and your companions trying to flop it out again. Carol loved the antics so much, she nearly laughed down the side of her leg.

   That exertion called for a nap, and we awoke at the start of the Parisian dinner hour. The restaurant next door to us,L’Ebauchoir, had intrigued us by its demonstrated popularity so we decided to have our last meal in Paris there. We were disappointed to discover, though, the tables were sold out for the evening. Must be some place, we thought, to sell out on a Wednesday. But it paid to have come to know the co-owner from our previous nightcap visits. The seating capacity is 85, but on this night it was expanded to 87, thanks to Thierry’s intervention.

   It was well worth it. Carol’s whitefish was flaky and delicate, and my grilled pork was succulent and delicious. We polished off a bottle of rosé, and indulged with a dessert of a profiterole, a puff pastry filled with ice cream and bathed in chocolate sauce. I joked to Carol we should sop up the chocolate with a baguette. Later, when the waiter noticed all the leftover sauce, he asked, “Would you like a baguette?”

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