one day at a time

I've been resting up after a mad week of tearing around Paris, trying to cram in everything Cait wanted to do.  I don't think we made it, but believe me, we tried.  We started early, went hard,  and I was just too tired at the end of our days to write anything.  Whatever we missed will be here for her next trip.  I'll try to catch you up a few days at a time.  Too much at once and you'd zone out.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2016
Arrival day.  Mr. C went over to our fave charcuterie in the 5th to get a piece of roast pork for our dinner.  None to be had.  So we all walked down to the Enfants Rouges and brought home a delicious selection of things from the Moroccan stall; lamb tajine for me, couscous with lamb for Mr. C and Cait.  So delicious and flavorful.  After dinner we made plans for our Wednesday.  L'Orangerie!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2016
Metro over to Tuilleries, walk through the park up to the Place de la Concord and, across the river, La Tour Eiffel.

This is the museum with the round rooms displaying the Monet water lily paintings, great big panoramic canvases that surround you as you sit in the middle of the room and gaze at their beauty.

This was my third visit.  I never get tired of looking at these beautiful paintings.  Downstairs are three galleries of delicious Impressionist paintings by all of the greats and some lesser known greats.

This is my favorite Renoir of the sisters playing the piano.  They're on the same page they were when I saw them a year ago.

I think of this as "Susan at the Beach" but it's actually "Femme `å la mandoline" by Matisse.

I'd also like to have a bedroom that looks like this.

After a couple of hours we went back out into the sunshine ~ we've been very lucky this whole trip.  Only one day of rain and that wasn't too serious although we did get caught! We all headed home but Cait and I got off at Hotel de Ville and went through the big BHV department store, top to bottom.  We were actually looking for a rubber tub mat; the shower is very slippery and has some serious size and hot/cold water problems.  But we have learned to live with those; it's the slippery we were really worried about.  We found a mat up on the top floor so of course we had to walk through every floor on the way down.  Lots of good stuff.  BHV (Bazaar Hotel de Ville) is like a Bloomingdales with a fantastic hardware store in the basement.  After shopping we stopped for lunch at a sidewalk cafe and then strolled home down rue du Temple.  Wine, cheese, bread, olives awaited our arrival.  Plans for tomorrow?  The Thursday market at Richard Lenoir for Cait and me and a nice free morning for Mr. C.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2016
Off to the market with a very short list but we ended up with quite a bit of stuff, of course.  The market is actually manageable on Thursdays; Sundays are a madhouse.

We strolled the aisles looking at all the beautiful food.  Cait bought a new scarf, I bought luscious olives, some Clementines, a few veggies Mr. C had ordered, found some peach yogurt in the little glass jars, and a couple of things I will go back and get to take home.  And flowers, of course.

Back home for lunch and then an outing of the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (hunting and nature).  It's a small museum just a few blocks from us. Interesting things like stuffed animals, paintings of dogs and horses and of hunting scenes, hunting guns, photographs, and a nifty display upstairs of a lair some hunter set up on his property to watch the animals as they came and went.  A rich man's pursuit.  We walked home and stopped at a patisserie for a couple of goodies for dessert.  The clerk handed us this perfectly wrapped package, a gift of deliciousness.

Inside were these two beautiful tarts, one au Normande (apple) and one abricot.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2016
Museum day today.  The Musée Jacquemart-André over in the 8th.  This is Mr. C's favorite non-Monet museum, his favorite being the Marmotan that is all Monet all the time, including even MORE lily ponds.  So we got on the Metro over to FDR, then walked to the museum.

We got there only to discover a looooong like waiting to get it.  Why?  Because along with all the goodies in the house there is a small Rembrandt show there for about two months.  We decided we'd go over to the Nissim Camondo museum instead.  It's on the edge of the Parc Monceau and went to it the last time we were here.  It's another "house" museum, dating from the turn of the 20th Century until about 1935 when the owner died and gave the house to the state.  It is full of beautiful things collected by the father, Moise Camondo, and a very sad story.  Moise's  son Nissim,after whom the museum is named, died in WW I, and his daughter, son-in-law and two children deported and  died at Auschwitz.   The house has an amazingly modern kitchen that includes two huge cook stoves, a roasting pit big enough to hold a whole sheep, pipes in the walls to vet the heat, a "downstairs" dining room for the staff who ran the place.

I don't know who keeps these things so shiny but the room is lined with them.  There is also a very "modern" bathroom upstairs with heated pipes for warming towels and heating the room.

We came back to the nabe, bought some of these signature baguette sandwiches, and came home for lunch.

Here's a pretty picture taken inside our little apartment.  It has two big windows in the front, one in the back that opens into the center of the building and is really for good ventilation.  But the front windows look out over trees and let the sun pour in.

That's about it for this session but there's much more to come.  I'll catch you up on the next few days tomorrow.  There's always something to report from this marvelous city.  I'm only too happy to be the one doing it.