WooHoo We're on a roll again 8-5-15

Today we took up the challenge and went to a new small museum, the Musee Cernuschi.  It's a small museum abutting the Parc Monceau in the 8th arrondissement specializing in Asian art, specifically, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.  The collection begins with artifacts from around 2500 BCE and goes up to around 1200 CE, but it also has art works from the last 10 years donated by current members of the friends of the museum.


We caught one of our predictable buses across town and when we got into the neighborhood, we got off and found a boulanger where we purchased sandwiches, drinks, and desserts.  Next we went into the parks and found a shady bench to sit and eat (broken record but we enjoy it).   The Parc Monceau is really a little gem of a park because it contains what the British term a "folly",  a modern construction that mimics a ruin from classical antiquity.  As you walk through the park you see many bits of "ruin" scattered throughout the park.   It's also a very affluent part of town so the denizens are more chic than the ones in Buttes Chaumont, lots of joggers and sunbathers in stylish attire.




After lunch we went into the museum for our visit.  It is small but the stuff they have is very impressive.  I loved the rooms of Chinese bronze vessels dating from 2500 BCE up through the Tang dynasty, same thing with the fired clay objects, just first rate.  The surrealists of the 20th century have nothing on the inventiveness of the ancient Chinese in terms of  fantastic beings.  Also almost overwhelming were the large pair of cloisonne vases just inside the entry room, with their handles representing what appear to be bats.


After our museum visit we spent another hour or so in the park just enjoying all the people.  There was another cadre of ponies for the little children to ride around the park on, pretending like they were riders out on the steppes of Asia, or at least the Bois de Boulogne.

Interestingly, this place was the site of the first parachute jump in the 18th century.



Another hot day made us really want to linger before getting on the bus for a hot ride home.
Deb made a lovely dinner of Dorade Royale with a vegetable medley which we washed down with chilled Rose.   Nice day, this.