For our fourth anniversary, Ian gifted me an original Paul Ferney oil painting from his Paris collection, as a nod to our someday trip to France. When we finally started planning, I meant to email the artist to find out the address of the flower shop that was the subject of our painting. But I forgot. I remembered again the first night we were in Paris, walking to our apartment in Montmartre, a place the Ferneys had blogged about. I decided to keep an eye out for that flower shop. If we found it, it would be serendipity. Unfortunately, I never saw a flower shop that looked quite like a match. C'est la vie.
A few weeks after we got back from vacation, I saw a notice that Paul Ferney's Paris paintings were now available as prints. I browsed the collection to see if I recognize anything after our week in Paris. Then I noticed another flower shop painting, which was a different vantage point of the same shop as the painting Ian got me. And that one had a location in its name. Which happened to be Rue Cler. I freaked out a little. I immediately looked for the flower shop on Google street view. Rue Cler isn't that long, and we had walked it's entire length. I found the shop. We had walked right past it and not noticed, since the shop was closed and we were huddled under an umbrella with an eye for dinner. I wondered where the flower shop was in relation to L'Eclair, where we had dinner. I couldn't find the restaurant on street view, so looked it up online to find the address. It was right next to the flower shop from our painting. Serendipity.
See all our photos from Paris on Flickr, and catch up on our trip posts.
*We turned our celebrity couple name, bestowed by my brother Caleb, into an Instagram hashtag (#iannagoestoeurope) and now it's virtually impossible to refer to our trip in any other way.