Ben, J-Lo, And My Other Newest Friends in Paris

Hollywood stars Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, recently married and honeymooning in France, were spotted having lunch Tuesday at an alfresco dining area overlooking the Napoleon Courtyard of the Louvre Museum in Paris.

The courtyard features the museum’s iconic glass-and-metal pyramid, designed by Chinese-American I.M. Pei, where visitors enter the museum.

Meanwhile, I’m attending a travel-memoir writing workshop this week in Paris with travel writer Rolf Potts.

Our paths crossed when I chose to eavesdrop on three women in the courtyard and write about their conversation, according to my workshop assigment.

The three friends were giddy with excitement and couldn’t resist volunteering to tell me they just had lunch at the table next to the movie stars.

Yet they didn’t realize it until they were outside the elevated patio dining area. So they took a seat facing the famous couple at lunch from the concrete edge of a courtyard fountain, about the distance of a football pitch away.

“We’re going to wait here until they get up to leave,” one of them told me. “I just want to see them again.”

The women stayed busy speculating about their fateful enounter with fame, calling friends and relatives in Canada on their phones about it, and plotting to get closer by walking to the bench against the wall of the patio where a couple sat apparently clueless about the celebrity fame and fortune dining not more than a few meters above them.

Never mind the fortunes and fame of the Louvre Museum itself at their fingertips.

“I just wish I knew what she had to eat,” said one of the women about Lopez, who’s now known to fans as “Bennifer.”

My cohorts in the writing class were nearly as excited as the Canadian fans when I reported my find, so I went back to monitor the further procedings.

Bennifer and Ben by then were up from the table looking like they were heading toward stairs taking them down to the courtyard pyramid, the public entrance to the museum, which was closed to the public.

I sprung toward the archway where I thought they’d emerge and voila! There they were.

I took all the photos I needed, backpedaling directly in front of the couple, who both looked like lunch had seriously disagreed with them, for several meters before a security guy shooed me away.

A few minutes later I was amused when some paparazzi dressed in black came after me with scoldings.

“If you ever see a celebrity again like that don’t do what you did,” I was warned.

It seems I was in their way and one showed me a shot of the famous couple with me in his frame like a “Where’s Waldo!” scene.

“Never do that again,” he said.

Heh heh, I promised.