Another Rainy Sunday at the Orangerie 1-31-16

Today was another rainy day so an indoor activity seemed to be the order of the day.  Deb and I had been to the Orangerie once together and on another occasion she waited outside when Jim Cook and I went in for a visit. So today we went together for a visit and a chance for her to see the parts of the museum that she had not seen previously.

The Orangerie is associated with the Musee D'Orsay and has 8 extremely large Monet mural size paintings called "Les Nymphéas" (water lilies) which are world famous.  They were installed in the museum early in the 20th century and have been displayed there ever since.  In addition, the museum has the collection of Paul Guillaume, a Parisian art dealer who collected works by Renoir,
 Cezanne, Picasso, Laurencin, Derain, Rousseau, Soutine, Matisse, and Utrillo during their lives and were donated to the museum by his widow after his death.  Really impressive paintings and it shows again how important
private collectors can be in keeping important art from being dispersed.  His collection is spread over about 8 rooms in the basement of the building and is very intimate compared to Musee D'Orsay.

When we finished we went to their little cafeteria and had four o'clocks, a little sweet and a hot drink before we walked back to our bus home through the Tuileries.

Starting our Goodbye Tour - Le Trumilou 1-30-16

Man it was really windy all night last night, I woke a couple times to hear it howling outside and it was still blowing when I got up.  Shortly thereafter it started raining, lightly at first, and turned into a full blown downpour.  We've seen less than 5 of these rains all year so this was special.  It kept up for maybe 30 minutes and then settled into a intermittent pattering for most of the rest of the day.  So clouds and rain and then out into it.
On the way down as we changed trains there was a string ensemble playing Pachelbel's canon and then "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" in the subway and they were REALLY good. The acoustics of the subway are fun anyway but these people really knew their business. A five euro tip was definitely in order.
We've got a list of restaurants that we want to visit again before we leave so we're taking whatever chance we can to go and have a meal.  Three days ago was Chartier, then two days ago for dinner we went to Arts et Science Reuniss.  Today was Le Trumilou, the last time we tried here was just after New Years and though their sign said they were open it was just a tease.  But today it was no tease and we trundled in around 2:00 for a long overdue lunch.  We calculated that we've been coming to this restaurant for close to 30 years and like Chartier it is basically unchanged.  Different staff but the same great food cooked simply and with care.  Deb had their a jambon pot-au-feu in aspic with a moutarde sauce followed by nice slices of their roasted veal with another moutarde sauce, while I had a big pot of creamy vegetable potage followed by duck in a plum sauce with a side of frites.  All recipes that are not really flashy but so traditional and so well cooked that they were a banquet. For wine we had a Cahors, made from the Malbec grape, that was better than almost any Chilean Malbec I've ever had.  I'm unabashedly an enthusiast of French wines, especially the lesser known ones.
After lunch we walked over to the Ile St. Louis to Notre Dame and walked around the outside in the rain to watch the gargoyles in action. The rain had relented quite a bit after lunch but some were still spitting just a bit.  We walked over to catch our bus home but due to more manifestations (strikes/ demonstrations) our stop was not being serviced today so we had to take the Metro back.  All in all a great day.

A Great Mid-Winter Brocante Market 1-29-16

My sister alerted us to a blog entry by David Lebovitz about a big mid-winter brocante market centered around the Mairee of 3rd arrondissement beginning today so it was one of our targets for today's outing.  The other was the auction that we checked out yesterday at Hotel Druout, but the auction didn't begin until 2:00pm so we had lots of time beforehand to explore the brocante.
The brocante was located right along one of our bus routes so it was an easy place to find and we got there around 11:00 am.  It was located on several streets surrounding the mairee so we started on one corner and worked our way around.  We immediately hit paydirt in the form of a city crest in a format that we had not seen before and that really fueled our resolve to cover the market.  It turned out to be so large that we just bagged going to the auction, stopped for a nice lunch and then finished going to all the vendors.  We finished just before sundown and made it back to our apartment in the final light of the day.  We're still dark until 8:00am but now darkness is actually close to 6:00pm almost 90 minutes later than a month ago. Of
course today there was only about an hour or so actual sunshine but it's still nice to have light.

Something old, something new 1-28-16

I felt good today so we went down to Hotel Drouot today to check out some auctions for tomorrow. I found a couple interesting pieces in the online catalog so we went to look at them.  We're going to a large brocante market tomorrow in the morning and in the afternoon we may very well go back and see if they can be picked up reasonably since the auctions begin around 2:00pm.
After our little discovery trip we walked over to Chartier, the restaurant we have been going to since our very first visit to Paris.  They are open and serving continuously all day long so a late lunch or an early dinner is easy, plus the food is always good and relatively inexpensive.  Today was no exception, they immediately seated us at a table and took our orders.  Then within a couple minutes they seated another man at our table, at Chartier sharing a table is very normal.  He turned out to be quite a nice young financial manager at a company near by who needed a quick lunch before a presentation he had to do later in the afternoon.  We had a pleasant conversation about traveling and a bit about living in Paris before he had to leave.
After lunch Deb wanted to go to a food speciality store that is featured in David Lebovitz's blog now and again.  It's named G. Detou, which is a word play in French for "I have everything".  It's not a very large shop but it is crammed floor to ceiling with edible offering that range from mundane to fairly exotic.  Much of it is geared towards professional food purveyors, so specialty items related to confectionary products are prominent.  You go through
 the store and pick out items you want and take them to the two clerks at a counter and they total up the purchases, bag them and give you a paper.  You take the paper with the total over to another person behind a window and pay, then you take the receipt back to the counter and they give you your purchases.  A little antiquated but totally charming in action.  The payment window is a joke because you can walk into the room with the collector and shop at shelves situated behind her back.  
We're stocking up on goodies to bring back to the U.S., like a kilo of Herbes des Provence.  Deb was going to get two 250 gram bottles that were 2.55 euros each, but the clerk asked if she would like to buy a kilo.  He said the kilo package was 4.40 euros, so you get twice as much for around 60 centimes less, guess what we bought?
As we headed over to the bus to go home we had a brief stop at perhaps the premier cooking equipment store in Paris, E. Dehillerin.  They have been in the same place for over 100 years and stock every kind of kitchen implement a cook could possibly need.  Unfortunately they were closing in 15 minutes so we have to plan a return visit when we can do some indepth looking.

The Musee de la Marine 1-27-16

Both of us felt good enough to get out today and the weather was good so we went over to the Musee de la Marine.  It is the museum of the Navy and has exhibits that include paintings, models and other assorted paraphernalia associated therewith.  It is a wonderful museum, the scale models of the various warships from the 17th through 20th centuries are superb.  I don't have a sailing background nor does Deb but the models are so beautiful that we couldn't help but love them.
The first room contained the royal galley of Napoleon and his nephew Napoleon III, it's around 60 feet long, with oars for 20 and a royal salon in the rear.  It was big enough that in the time of Napoleon III they towed it with a steam barge until they got close to where the reviewing stand would be before they started rowing.

The second room focued on figureheads and the offerings are really appealing,  it's hard to believe how large some of them can be. I mean 10-15 feet high.  We learned that for the smaller ships, around 70 guns or less the figureheads were almost alway women, but for the major ships of the line up to 120 guns or more it was men and the gods from antiquity.








After that most of the next 4-5 rooms focused on marine paintings and the rewriting of French naval history relative to England.  Imagine a painting that shows a French ship of the line just on the verge of boarding Nelson's flagship, the Victory, at Trafalgar.  If only it hadn't been for the perfidious English ship that attacked them from the other side!  They also show Nelson being shot by the
 French sharpshooter, which really did happen.  He's about 1/2 inch tall on a painting that is easily 4 feet high by 6 feet long.  Of course it was painted by a contemporary and they were trying to make the best of a bad situation and propagandise for Napoleon I.  There were others that took a similar approach.

However there were also several beautiful paintings of French ports from the 1800's by Vernet that were exceptional.  The one he painted of La Rochelle looked just the like the harbor we saw when we were out there early in the summer.  The ones of Bordeaux looked very much the the Bordeaux skyline of today as well.
The large focus of the first part of the museum was military, but in the second there was a combination of both military and civilian, so there were models of merchant, passenger, and freighters.  It was a very enjoyable few hours visit.


It was turning dark when we left so we waited a few minutes and got a close up view of the Tour Eiffel lit up and sparkling before we caught a bus over to the Metro.  We had dinner at our neighborhood restaurant, Art et Science Reuniss before heading back to the apartment.

Now It's My Turn 1-26-16

Sorry to say that it was my turn to be ill today, I've got the same thing as Deb had last week.   We did get out for a dental appointment but that's all.  Here's a pic of the Galettes du Roi, a celebration pastry for after the Christmas season.  They are the big rage around Paris right now, puff pasty filled with marzipan.  Often with a hidden treat inside, like the King Cakes at Mardi Gras in New Orleans

We're Out and About in a Small Way 1-25-16

Today was sunny and warm, so just after noon we headed down to the Louvre for a short visit.  Last night we stayed up very late, for us, watching the AFC playoff game with the Broncos and Patriots. WooHoo, glad to see Denver prevail, but a sterner test is ahead possibly.   Carolina looked very strong against Arizona and they really believe, I hope that Peyton can rise to the occasion and go out on a high note just like Elway did so many years ago.
So anyway we went down to the Louvre and spend a couple hours going through their collection of fragments of gothic architecture and 16-17th century French sculpture.   The gothic stuff was almost exclusively religious fragments from churches and abbeys, but as one would
 expect of the Louvre, it was really the creme-de-la-creme.  Beautiful column capitals, sculptured heads, tomb effigies, as well as many madonna. Remarkable even after all the stuff we've seen in other museums too.


There was one series of around 4 rooms that were not accessible right now but we were able to bypass them easily and went over their collection of 16th and 17th century sculpture.  Most of these were funerary in nature but again the pieces on display were best of breed.
It was interesting to see several monuments that at one time contained the hearts of the person being honored.  I guess it allowed for monuments to the same person in more than one venue.  I know that it was done quite frequently throughout the medieval and renaissance era, so it's not a rare occurrence.  Most of the stuff on display was rescued after the Revolution of 1789.  Another tomb conceit that I've seen is to have
 a sculpture of the person in life above the sarcophagus with another representation of the person in death.  Kind of "this is what I once was and this is what I am now", just so we don't get any unrealistic ideas.

Small assorted from Deb January 23, 2016

*** Well, I've managed to give Warren my cold. The poor soul has now started to cough and feel miserable while I am starting to mend. Rats! However, at least one of us will be perky enough to keep hot tea with lemon and honey coming,  and to make grocery runs when necessary. Hope he has a shorter down-time than I did. This was the longest "running" (pun intended) cold I've had in ages.
***Warren mentioned some of the things we're thinking about as we begin to orient ourselves to heading home. This has been sort of a "gap-year" experience for us - the first full year of Warren's retirement. It's given me a chance to examine and reevaluate my goals for whatever time I'm lucky enough to have left.
***Living a life with fewer belongings here in the apartment has been an interesting experience and has helped me redefine what things I enjoy living with and which are less important. For example, boy, do I need a lot fewer clothes than I have in Denver. I've gotten along quite merrily with the abbreviated wardrobe I've had here. I foresee a bunch of donation trips to ARC in my future.
***But, despite the well-equipped kitchen here, I have missed cooking utensils like my Cuisinart, a tool I use almost daily in Denver (yes, I can see you all shedding tears at our culinary deprivations). In truth, there are so many fresh, additive-free convenience foods made here that we haven't suffered at all but I'll love being back to my faithful old kitchen companions. Elizabeth unpacked many of her own favorites while living with my kitchen so I know she understands whereof I speak.
*** I'm hoping that I can keep up some of the healthy habits we've fallen into here. Specifically lots more walking and virtually no snacking. The French just don't seem to snack. When they eat, they certainly eat mindfully and heartily, but in between meal grazing just doesn't seem to happen (with the exception of children's much awaited after school treats.) I've loved watching people enjoy their meals here, talking and gesturing and eating with obvious pleasure. It's especially fun to watch women friends eating together, drinking a bottle of wine and eating every morsel off their plates and visibly ignoring calories. I don't know whether they fast the rest of the week to stay slim or what, but when they eat, they delight in eating. Not binging, just savoring.
***Surprising things I've missed from home include our paintings and other artwork. I hadn't realized how much I enjoy them every single day. It's like missing the face of a friend. I hadn't expected that. So glad our landlady has so much art hanging, even if it's not exactly my thing (markedly better than the crime-themed travesties our friends the Garnsey's endured in their Christmas rental though!)





***A revelation for me, though, is that I don't need things to remember people. I've realized that I don't think any less often of lost family members for example, than when I had objects from them around me. I think it will ease my divesting of family objects. I'm planning on finding good homes for a variety of things. Warren and I have belongings from family on both sides and it's time to do some editing. The young folks in our families neither recognize nor need nor want a bunch of this stuff and it's time to let it go to places that could use and/or enjoy it. I won't forget my Mom without it!
***A response to several queries - no, we won't have a lot of things to bring back. We haven't really bought all that much. Some little etchings, a bunch of bicycling medals, some mismatched silverware and most of all some food items like Camargue red rice. Oh, and I did succumb and gave in gracefully to Warren buying me two neat handmade indigo jackets from Asia. But other than that, not much. We have so much stuff - we really came not to buy things, but to buy experiences. And that we've done! Admittedly, most of them have been innocuous, small experiences, like minor museums and small neighborhood restaurants, but that is our taste.

***A small social note. Yesterday we had the pleasure of hosting the two couples that we had met on one of our Paris walks. You might remember the lady and gentlemen whom we met outside their historic houses while we were doing a walk from one of our books. We'd gone to lunch with them, then met their spouses,  later attended one's art opening, and gone to a concert at another's apartment. Anyway, we suggested they come out to the wilds of the 19th arrondisement and join us for lunch. We proposed a champagne aperitif out our apartment then a walk to one of our favorite restaurants, Le Laumiere (I was too daunted to try to make a meal for the 4 of them).
***So yesterday they came. They arrived on the Metro and Warren met them. I had champers and some little different cheese bites (recommended by our cheese monger especially for the champagne) waiting. In they came and immediately invalidated all we'd read about French formality. They happily  trooped all around the apartment, discussing the art, admiring the terrace, wanting to know all about the neighborhood which is unfamiliar to them except by the Philharmonic Hall where they attend regular concerts. Each speaks some English, and as soon as we had broken the ice by making our usual fools of ourselves by speaking French, a multi-lingual chat-fest ensued. It didn't let up through champagne, the walk to the restaurant through the cold, drizzly streets, or through the three hours of lunch. By the time we finished, our heads were swimming with trying to keep up with all the conversational themes and the challenges of language (yes, and maybe swimming with a little wine, too.)
***Even the walk down to the restaurant was busy, since our guests were anxious for information on varied topics from the relationship of bistro Arts et Sciences Reunis' relationship to the guilds, to what types of beef our butcher carries (fortunately, he passed their inspection), to what Jewish sects our neighbors represent as we passed the many families headed home from Saturday services, to needing to stop into our cheese monger to identify the delicate blue cheese she'd recommended, some of which they bought.
***They seemed to enjoy the restaurant's offerings, and we hope they did and weren't just being incredibly well-mannered. They catechized the waiter as to whether the restaurant really did make all its own stuff (which we knew it does) but it was nice to see our guests reassured and it led to a busy discussion of current and past French cuisine and all the changes. Fascinating to hear it from a French viewpoint, and poignant to hear the stories of the wartime experiences of the oldest member of the group (his family subsisted on gathered chestnuts and a bit of soured wine for weeks in their farm home near Strasbourg after the German troops has pillaged the area).
***So, despite our indifferent health, we had a dandy afternoon. These folks are intrepid and turned down our offers of postponement due to our coughs and the cold weather. At past 80, Renaud is still busy working on the family houses that he owns out on the Iles aux Moines off the Brittany coast. After interrogating us about Colorado, maybe we'll have the pleasure of seeing them in the Wild West. All of them have been to the US repeatedly on business and pleasure, and are open to visiting again. (We're hoping above all that our dear friends, Julia and Jose, are coming to visit their son and us this year!)
***We'll have dinner at Renaud & Francine's house with Francoise and Pierre-Yves attending, just a few days before we leave. It will make a pleasant social ending to our fast-fleeting Paris sojourn.

On the Mend? Crossed Fingers 1-22-16

Well we got out and did a little shopping today, it was cold and Deb coughed quite a bit but she says she's feeling better.  So who knows, I'm coughing a little more.
Tomorrow we have guests, the people we met down in the 14th arr, who we went to lunch with at their local.  We've also gone to an art opening and a musical soiree with them, so they're our biggest acquaintances in Paris, other than all of our vendors of course.  We know we've made progress with our vendors because some of them now give us little gifts along with our purchases, we're locals now. Right before we have to leave, but that's life.












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The Bug Hangs On 1-21-16

Now I'm coughing just a little, but Deb is on the mend.  We're still holed up but the weather looks like it should be improving in the next couple days, less cold.  We're going to try to shop a little tomorrow and see how that goes for her.  Tossed on the waves but not sunk.

Still Pretty Low Key 1-20-16

With Deb still under the weather we decided that today would be a good day to start talking about our return to the U.S. so we did.  There are many topics that we have to cover, about the house, about our attitude towards the accumulation of 40 plus years of marriage, about how to start simplifying our lives a bit, about next year's plans, about the need to buy new vehicles (we sold ours before leaving), about what we will bring back with us, just a load of things that we've put on hold for the last year.
After a bit of lunch Deb ordered me out of the apartment for the afternoon, it was cold but the sun was out so it was pretty nice.
A short bus ride put me at the far end of the now drained canal and I took a few pics at this end, mostly they are pushing the mud and detritus around into a pile where an excavator can pick it up and load it into a series of waiting dump trucks.  It's not a very
 appetizing sight but when it's over it will be a much cleaner canal again.  I spent a few minutes sidewalk supervising and then caught the bus again a little further down the line.   I'm still on the hunt for a good chicken broth so I headed over to Galleries
Lafayette for the food courts.  Once again I couldn't find any broth but as I walked around I got an idea.  I came across a Dim Sum bar with a large assortment of goodies and ended up buying several spring rolls, a chicken brochette, a couple dumplings with shrimps wrapped in a ground pork pate.  Those selections with a box of Canton rice made a delicious dinner for us.

A Very Quiet Day 1-19-15

A very quiet day today, Deb is still sick with a cold and I went out in the morning to buy a few groceries.   I bought chicken to make a chicken broth to help with her cold.  It was pretty cold today and I couldn't muster up any motivation to go out so I didn't.

Getting Back into the Rhythm of Paris 1-18-16

We had a dentist appointment today, just to get our rhythm for Paris back.  Only one problem though, Deb has another upper-respiratory issue like the one she returned from the U.S. with in December. Likely a combination of dry airplane air and a host of coughing passengers, whatever it was she's got drainage in her head and coughing fits.  So we cancelled her appointment, but I went ahead with mine. Hopefully I won't break another tooth while I'm here, it's getting expensive but of course not as expensive as the U.S.
I went over and got the temporary crown and then went for a walk in the neighborhood around where the dentist is located.  He's very near Parc Monceau, so I went to see if the third sculpture that we missed on our last trip was still there, but no luck.  I had lunch in a small brasserie in the area, a good saute of duck in pappardelle pasta, followed by a pear tarte.  After lunch I started looking for a place to buy chicken broth for Deb but it doesn't seem to exist in Paris.  All I can find is bouillon cubes which seem to be close to 50% salt and that just won't work.
On the way back on the bus I realized that I had a good opportunity to go over to the Canal St. Martin and see what the drained canal looked like.  I read that they were finding all sorts of things in the canal, bikes, bedsprings, motor scooters, bottles, etc.  I have to say that it is absolutely true, it makes me sad to see so much junk in the mud at the bottom of the canal.  I would guess that if a person stole a bike for a ride home and didn't want to be caught they might throw it in the canal.  Perhaps a person couldn't afford the motor scooter they bought, so they throw it in the canal and report it stolen and let insurance take care of the fallout, I don't know.  The strangest thing I saw was a piece of construction
 equipment used for packing down small areas of asphalt, like on a bike path.  Now who's gonna leave that in the canal?  I may go further down another day, but today in just about 2 bridges I saw enough junk to fill a bunch of dump trucks. Parisians should be ashamed of this, but ...!  
 
Oh I almost forgot, the inflatable Tyrannosaurus, that had to have been tossed in after the canal was drained.

Back to Winter in Paris 1-17-16

Today we had to fly back to Paris after a really remarkable week in Sicily.  It rained pretty much all night last night and it was kind of cool this morning.  Not cold mind you but with the wind it was a little cooler than it has been.
We had a bit of a walk after breakfast and went over to a pasticceria suggested by our hotel that has been in business since 1860 and bought several pieces of La Martorana.  La Martorana is marzipan shaped in the form of fruits and then glazed to look like that specific fruit and this pasticceria specializes in them.  They aren't cheap and given that the marzipan is so fresh it's surprising that they aren't even a little more costly.  We hadn't gotten a chance to buy any when we were in Agrigento so this was our last chance and we grabbed it.  
After our little foraging expedition we took them back to the hotel and left them there while we walked over to the marina that was just a couple blocks away.  The roundabout at the end of the street has another modern sculpture, a sobering monument against the Mafia. It translates as, "to the fallen in the fight against the Mafia".  I doubt that tourists ever see much in the way of Mafia activity directly but it is most definitely around.
There are many yachts in the marina and some looked very expensive, yesterday evening I went out to the harbor and spent a little time looking at the large ferries that take passengers and vehicles from Palermo to other Mediterranean cities like Genoa, Bari, and Napoli.  It was interesting to watch a fleet of harbor tractors hauling semi-trailers from one ferry to another that was docked next to it.  The harbor tractors were made by Ferrari and they were red, very cool.
Our flight was at 2:30 so we had to be out at the airport by about 12:00 to turn in our car and get our bags checked.  As we were leaving town we saw the tops of the mountains to the south of Palermo capped in snow, not heavy snow but still white on top.
The sea was also quite turbulent with the wind and there were white caps and vigorous breakers all along the shore next to the highway.
The flight back was very easy and we were in Paris by about 5:00 and back at the apartment by about 6:30 hoping for a peaceful evening.