Deb comments: Elizabeth's visit 5-20-15

***Enjoying Elizabeth's visit. She's never really been interested in coming to Paris, so she has no serious expectations and it makes her an easy-going visitor. She had read a guidebook and picked out some places of interest, and we've been trying to hit most of them.

***Today, Wednesday the 20th, we started off with a trip to Notre Dame wherein Elizabeth took part in a somewhat lengthy introduction to the architecture and history of the cathedral.  Then we took off to spend some time at the big impressionist museum, Musee d'Orsay.






The museum was created out of a picturesque old railway station, the Gare d'Orsay, built for the World's Fair in Paris in 1900. It was designed to fit in with the architecture of its neighbors - the Louvre and the Academie Francaise, so it has lots of the creamy stone and neoclassic lines, accented with a bit of art nouveau ironwork and a couple of huge, graceful clocks. By the late 1930's its lines were too short for modern trains and it became outdated. It's a testament to the creativity and architectural sensitivity of Paris to have found such a practical and delightful new use for such a wonderful building.

***The three of us had a dandy time looking at some of the impressionist paintings - the place is much too big to see in a day - and playing the "Museum Game" (so, what would you take home in this room, this wing, this museum?) Elizabeth recorded her new collection on her cell and bought one of the museum store's nifty digital images.

*** After D'Orsay, we strolled over for our dinner reservation through the St. Germain neighborhood, one of my favorites. Stopped for a glass of wine and got fresh roasted peanuts as a bar snack. Rats! one of my all time favorites and I didn't want to eat them for fear of spoiling dinner...

*** Dinner as at Spring, a place we love. Elizabeth was her usual good-sport self, and soldiered on through the six light courses of Daniel Rose's "surprise menu." He never publishes a menu, but rather chooses what he thinks looks good in the market that day and will go together nicely.  Elizabeth added a significant number "first tries" to her list - mackerel, sweetbreads, French smoked eel, and an assortment of things whose names we probably didn't catch. She and Warren got the wines paired with each course and played a wine guessing round with the sommelier They lost, but Elizabeth came close.

*** Visiting with the sommelier, we mentioned our upcoming trip to Strasbourg. He volunteered that he had studied there, asked what we were interested in, suggested some places to visit and kindly wrote down three restaurant/winery recommendations for us in Strasbourg. Geez, if the French wait staff gets anymore stand-offish and rude, I don't know if we'll be able to deal with it...