Paris - Day 9 (last day) – Père Lachaise Cemetary

We got an early start, had picnic leftovers for breakfast & I got about 85% packed up to avoid rushing around last minute. It was a really hot day & the sun was scorching hot. We ended up asking a nice guy we met on the street from the islands where the Cemetary was, as we made it to the area no problem, as it is near Shawn’s apt., but couldn’t find the entrance, so our new friend led us to it.
We purchased the 2 EUR map at the entrance & set out to find out first destination planned, Jim Morrison’s grave, with “Break on through to the other side” echoing loudly in my head. It was quite a walk & without the map, we would have gotten so lost! There is so much to see, and since we didn’t have all day, I figured if I could see Morrison’s & Edith Piaf’s grave sites, I’d be happy. We soon found Jim, surrounded of course by tourists, so one has to wait their turn to get near it for pics. It was not how I remembered seeing it in Cynthia & Sandra’s pics from their visit, it was surrounded by a shoulder-high metal fence. Some people had still managed to throw flowers, cigarettes & joints onto it though.

We had little trouble finding the Piaf gravesite as well, just look for the crowds & you’ll find the famous people. It’s beautiful, with many flowers & a photo of her in her younger years.

I figured we had time to see one more, that of Oscar Wilde, as I remembered Cynthia & Sandra’s pictures of the huge stone pharaoh tomb covered with lipstick kisses. We found it no problem & caught bits of info from a tour that stopped in front of it. I didn’t know much about this man & we overheard the guide saying that Wilde was arrested for his relationship with his 17 yr old male lover & that a fan paid to have him moved & buried here at Père Lachaise. I of course had to kiss the tomb & leave my mark (before I got asked to get down off of the tomb next door by the tour guide!).

Sadly, my visit was almost over. We headed back to the apartment for a quick lunch. I finished packing up & we headed out to the airport. We got confused as to which train to take there & we ended up on one that you had to get off of & change to another to get there. We made it in plenty of time & got to spend a few minutes together before saying goodbye. No tears shed this time, as we knew Shawn would be home in 3 wks (well, I held back, I must say!). I went through customs, but turns out that the wicket you pass through is only a first step. Took me a few minutes to realize that you had to get on a shuttle bus to get to the terminal! Then you go through customs, in such a disorganized fashion compared to here! Why? Because a whole bunch of airport staff were arriving for their shift, and they don’t wait in line, they just pass through in between passengers! I had to take off my shoes and passed through, but with all of the staff passing through & milling about, they didn’t even pay attention to me & forgot to give me back my passport & boarding pass & shoes right away. I didn’t feel safe at all the way security was being handled, I felt like anyone could sneak through or sneak something through unnoticed.

I stopped by a café to pick up a bottle of water for the flight (2 EUR 50!) and of course there was the regular huge crowd trying to board before preboarding. I sat beside an odd younger girl who told me she’d try to move if there were empty seats later – I told her I didn’t really care what she did (I was in the aisle seat of a 2 seat row). I had a giant woman in the seat behind me with long legs & huge feet, which kept digging into the back of my chair & jostling it! I considered talking to her about it several times, but figured it wasn’t her fault that she was so uncomfortable. I slept about 1 ½ hrs while she slept. Beforehand, I watched Shrek 3 (not so great & not nearly as good as the first) & SpiderMan 3 again. I was offered champagne as an aperitif & of course I said yes, it was delicious! I chose the sautéed chicken dish with mashed potatoes (very good!) over the crab macaroni (which looked dry & gross!). Customs was long upon landing as another international flight had come in at the same time as us, and the conveyer belt wasn’t working for a good ½ hr so waiting for luggage took forever! I was ecstatic to see my parents waiting for me inside the airport (vs. circling around in the car as they usually do) – turns out our flight landed late & with the customs & luggage delay, it was an hr & a half later than I thought it was!

Home sweet home & anxiously awaiting my hubby’s return on Aug. 30 & then we get to spend 5 days in Paris together at the beginning of September – trip log to come when Shawn gets back with the pix!!

Paris - Day 8 - Saturday - picnic à la parisien!

After such a long & busy week, we opted not to set an alarm & figured we’d wake up on our own, probably by about 9:30 AM. What ended up happening was we woke up at 8:30 & fell back to sleep until 11:30! With half of our day gone already & Shawn needing to do groceries for the week (plus we needed to pick up our picnic fare), I figured today would not run as scheduled & I mentally prepared myself to go with the flow & just be happy to have togetherness time with my hubby. We had brunch in (humus, eggplant, pita & mango juice (what I had eaten for breakfast most of the week & what Shawn lives on!). We headed out to Monoprix. I had a tough time deciding on what to buy for our picnic, as they had so many choices, particularly for cheeses. Shawn’s discovery of a line of light cheeses called Bridelight (5% mf!) won out & prevented me from going crazy with full fat stuff – we got a spreadable whipped cheese with herbs & a brie type cheese as well. We (with Shawn’s influence keeping me good!) chose a terrine made with duck & turkey versus a pâté de foie gras. The rest of our picnic purchases included a sundried tomato tapenade, crunchy little dill pickles, a couscous & olive salad, a whole-wheat homemade bread, 2 kinds of crackers & for dessert : fresh field strawberries & fig Newton cookies. The store has a back wall of wine that rivals a whole SAQ store here – choices are endless & after annoying Shawn a little, I finally picked 4 wines that were to bring (well, smuggle! Since we’re only allowed 1.5 l!) home – a Brouilly, a Grenache, a Côte De Rhones rosé & a Chardonnay.
After a stop for water at Franprix on the way home & packing up, we headed out to the Eiffel Tower. It seemed to take really long to get there on the metro. We arrived pretty late in the afternoon and marveled at the crowds waiting to get in to climb up the tower (which we had not planned on doing that day). After taking in some of the sights (like the menu for Jules Verne, which is a tourist attraction in itself – 140 EUR for the tasting menu!), we picked a spot that was not too shady or sunny or crowded & laid out our picnic spread & enjoyed it with some small bottles of red wine Shawn had been saving in his apt for my visit (1 brand was good, the other not so good!).

It was early evening but still bright & sunny when we finished. We walked around to take more pics & watched 2 men playing instruments they’d made from plastic pop bottles that sounded beautiful! We had intended to head home & go out for a late dinner. I also really had wanted to go to a nearby Club, just to say I’d been to one in Paris! But, Shawn realized we were approaching ‘l’heure bleue’ – the best time to take pics right before dusk, so we headed to the Champs d’Elysées in front of the tower. We once again realized we weren’t really ‘following the Paris beat’ properly, as we saw tons of people setting up their picnics on the grass whereas we’d already eaten! Shawn wanted to stay until they lit up the tower with the flashing lights (as we had observed from the Seine the night before), and this only happens at 10pm. The atmosphere held a certain anticipatory quality, it felt like everyone was anxiously and patiently awaiting a show to start, but voices were at a regular level, almost hush, everyone seemed so serene and calm and content – no raucous laughter, no yelling. There were guys walking around with bottles of wine & champagne, trying to pawn them off, but no one was buying, as everyone seemed well supplied. When the light show started, everyone stopped talking & audible gasps were heard & everyone applauded. It seemed like most people around us were locals though, so we were wowed by how everyone, locals & tourists alike, fall under the spell of this magical place. I wondered aloud if we’d spend our Saturday evening here if we lived here. It stayed lit up for about 20 minutes.


We finally decided to head home, and since we were still not hungry, we figured we wouldn’t need dinner & we’d just head out to the Club after changing. I could not keep my eyes open on the metro ride home & kept nodding off to sleep. After going to the bathroom once home, I lay down on the bed, intending just to rest for a minute & gather up enough strength to start getting ready & as each second passed, I wondered more & more how I was going to be able to stay awake at a club for any amount of time tonight! After a few minutes, Shawn came in & saw me passing out & convinced me that it was ok that we stay home (“I can’t take you out like this, you’re a zombie!”) & that we could go out next trip. I was too tired to argue & was relieved to crawl into bed!

An aside to Paris - Day 6 - re : art at Georges Pompidou

I almost forgot to mention that the very first work that we saw when we walked into the exhibit hall at Centre Georges Pompidou was one by Willem de Kooning - I got so excited when I saw it, much to Shawn's confusion! A few months ago, the company I work for produced a hard cover art catalogue for this artist's works on exhibit at Allan Stone Gallery in NYC. I found his paintings of women & human figures featured in the catalogue to be...well, not my cup of tea, I guess....but, we got to work with a woman who specializes in color accuracy in dealing with art photography, who was so interesting to meet and interact with. After having a really long conversation with her one day, I actually had wanted to blog about it, but never got around to it. She had explained to me all of the factors that need to be taken into consideration when not only photographing art and ensuring accurate color reproduction of the works, but how exhibits should be set up of galleries in general - covering everything from the lighting to the color of the walls & floors. Although I knew nothing about these subjects, and artists tend to have the reputation of being 'flakey', her explanations to me where in layman's terms that were fairly easy to understand - I actually impressed myself with being able to follow along in the conversation. I found out that she paints herself, and that de Kooning was her mentor for many years. Imagine being specialized in something so detailed as this, it was just so fascinating! Up until that point, working in the print industry had been pretty dry and monotonous, despite all of the learning on paper, ink and processes I had done, but working with this artist added an exciting dimension to my daily job for a few days, and I was grateful for the opportunity.

Here's a pic of de Kooning's painting that we saw at Pompidou - actually not so bad, as I have always been a fan of abstracts (it has no title & was painted in 1976) :

Paris - Day 7 - Friday – High Class shopping, amazing sushi & the beauty of La Seine at night...

I had planned to spend my last day alone checking out the famous Galeries Lafayette & Le Printemps stores that Shawn had told me about. After leaving early every day all week, I decided to take it easy and laze about the apartment a bit and headed out late morning. After taking the long way there (thanks to the RATP interactive site that told me to get out at a certain exit at Opera station, when I could have exited right in front of the stores!), I checked out Les Galeries first, floor by floor. This has the beautiful stained glass dome in it that’s “too pretty for a shopping mall”. I was amazed at the store set up, like a department store, but within the store are independent departments for each designer down each side – picture boutiques in a mall, within a big department store. After checking out a few of the price tags, it was more of a quick browse through each floor. I tried on a couple of somewhat affordable pieces on sale (Point Zero type stuff), but nothing really appealed to me. I spent some time in the souvenir department and finally found a little something for my 4 yr old nephew. After a quick rest stop & devouring my packed lunch, I went up to the top floor and checked out the view on top of the building. I had read on the Net that fashion shows were held on Fridays at 3pm, but the auditorium room where I think they’re held was all closed up – I guess maybe this wasn’t the season for them? I headed over to Le Printemps next door, checking out some of the kiosks outside of the mall. I spotted some cute sweaters & dresses in the last stall that seemed not too pricey & made a mental note to stop by there again on the way back. Printemps was more of the same designer stuff in an even fancier setting – they have a Duree in there (gourmet shop/resto) & a DeBeers counter. I got bored of that pretty fast, so I left & checked out H&M (mobbed with people for sales!), tried on a couple of things at Mango, but decided not to buy anything. I stopped at the little kiosk & tried on a cute sweater with a blouse sewn into it over my clothes & bought it, deciding not to get one of the cute little sundresses there as well (wasn’t too fond of the polka dots!).

We had decided to meet at Shawn’s office & I expectedly had a hell of a time finding it – it’s located at the end of the Pont de Lavallois-Beacon metro line in an industrial park that is really weirdly set up. I finally found his building, but the receptionist didn’t know who he was, even after I explained to her that he’s an outside consultant from Montreal working there. A woman leaving there was nice enough to help me & after asking a couple of people having a cigarette outside who happened to know him, she showed me to his desk.

We headed out to the sushi restaurant we had planned to go to that we researched when he first got there, called Koba, located near metro Quatre Septembre. We arrived at opening time (7pm) & it was as described in the reviews we had read : Small place, grungy with strange decor, but extremely kind & eager to please staff & chef (Koba). They seemed to speak English much better than French as well. We were confused by the menu offerings so we ordered sashimi & sushi chef's choice per his suggestion. We got like 16 pcs of sashimi, 12 pcs of sushi & 8 huge pcs of maki - freshest fish we've ever had! And all for only 15 EUR each! We couldn't believe it & were wondering what the catch was the whole time (there wasn't any!) Plus they gave us a whole bunch of complimentary hors d'oeuvres. We split a large can of Japanese beer which was only 6EUR & delicious! As many of you may know, you typically do not tip in Paris as it is included, but we didn't hesitate to give our waiter 5 EUR for the amazing service we got! He was so cute, he wanted to tell us come back soon but he said ‘maybe you come tomorrow?’.




The night was still young after our dinner, so we headed out to see the Seine (& try to find les plages, which we never found!). We were amazed to see the foot bridges packed with groups people having late evening picnics on the ground, complete with blankets spread out, premade salads, cheeses & of course many bottles of wine (at least one per person, it seemed!). Soft guitar music from the occasional group could be heard. We watched the many tour boat/cruises on the water, took pics of parliament buildings & churches, strolled along the water’s edge (& witnessed a woman taking a squat behind a pole – ewww!), saw some hip hop street performers & enjoyed the mild, pleasant weather.

Paris - Day 6 - Thursday - last museum sprint – 3 in one day!

I had an ambitious day planned & wanted to do two more museums that day, as this was my last day of my 4-day pass that I bought. Musée d’Orsay & L’Orangerie were supposed to be close in proximity to each other, so I knew with careful planning, I could probably do them both.
I approached Musée d’Orsay by studying the map of exhibits & basically choosing to go to see only the works of artists that I knew : Cézanne, Monet, Manet, Matisse, Degas, Picasso, Renoir, Van Gogh and the sculpture wings (that included Rodin, Claudel & Belleuse-Carrier). The rooms are not set up in order, so the map is really essential. I enjoyed my selective visit very much, the museum was not too packed & I finished in the time that I had wanted to. I also ran into some really cool exhibits of modern art furniture and some objets d'art. At the end, I even got to check out the model of the city under a glass floor, the cross sections of models of the Opera house and some exhibits in the stairwells of the museum, some on the architects & artists that created the building itself.


I had to go through the Jardins de Tuilleries to get to L’Orangerie – it was a sunny but overcast day, so my pix didn’t turn out that well. This museum is magical, as it houses 2 oval shaped rooms with 4 huge murals of Monet’s Nympheas (water lillies) in each. There are benches in the middle of the room & many people just sit on them for hours, drinking in the beauty of the paintings. Downstairs were a couple of other interesting exhibits : one called Kirili et les Nympheas, who’s work is inspired by Monet`s Nympheas. Check it out:

There was also an exhibit about famed art collector/tycoon Paul Guillaume, who is considered founder of this museum, as he had planned to open one to display all of his collection, but died at 45, and left all of his collection to his wife Domenica, with instructions to give it all to the Louvre. However, she sold most of the stuff, kept what she wanted, and remarried some miner millionaire Jean Walter. There are reproductions of their apartment behind glass, complete with tiny little reproductions of the paintings!

She adopted a son & then was accused of murdering him. She was never found guilty & it was believed she paid off the State with the art in exchange for her immunity. It wasn’t really clear to me on how the museum got started from all of this, but it seems they got back many of these works to display here.

I met Shawn at Le Centre Pompidou (a proper meeting this time!) and we shared a half a sandwich before going in. It took him awhile to get used to the modern art concept, but once he started snapping pictures, he was enjoying everything around us with an open mind. There were more salles noires, one with Little Miss Muffet and the spider involved (pretty creepy!). We were disappointed to have to leave at 9pm, as we had expected it to be open later on Thursdays.



It had rained (for the first time since Sunday AM!) while we were in there, but it had stopped when we went outside. It was still overcast & had cooled off a lot. We stopped at Le Cavalier Bleu for a quick light dinner & had delicious meal salads – Shawn’s had tuna & green beans in it, mine had a bunch of stuff, including potato salad & green beans & it was served with smoked salmon on toast.

Paris - Day 5 - Wednesday - a beautiful day at Musee Rodin, another botched meeting & delicious franco-italian dining

I started off at le musée Rodin by entering the building and viewing the temporary exhibit of his Asian-inspired work called Le Rêve japonais. You learn all about how he transitioned his career from artist to sculptor & many of the pieces he collected (vases, etc.) are also on display. There are many drawings & sculptures of a Japanese dancer who assumedly was another one of his muses, Hanako. Interesting, but not all that breathtaking. So, then when you walk outside, you see all of these sculptures on display, some of which I don’t think are works of Rodin. Proceeding onto the beautiful gardens, you get lead to The Thinker – really impressive & beautiful up close. It was such a beautiful day, the sun was shining to the point of it being burning hot (wrong day to wear all black, like I was!). I strolled around admiring all of the huge lifesize bronze sculptures and stood for quite a long time in front of La Porte d’Enfer, as so much is going on in the sculpture. I was amazed at the beauty of how everything was set up & drank in the sun drenched day. I noticed the café under the trees that everyone talks about, but I had my packed lunch in my bag & didn’t bother checking out prices. I chose a bench in the shade & decided to give myself one hour to eat & read. Meanwhile, after feeling very itchy on the neck, I realized I was being bitten by something (supposed to be no mosquitoes in Paris, according to Shawn!), so I moved over to near the fountain.

I knew that there was still more to see, so I figured out you had to go into the big building across the way called Hotel Biron. As luck would have it, there was a tour just starting off in the first room, so I jumped on it, not caring if I was supposed to be there or not! I learned all about Rodin’s first sculpture – a woman’s face with a big hat, made of clay which was not an accepted material for where he was entering, but all he could afford. To his dismay, the back of it all crumbled & it was unusable. Beside it is the marble head of his first real sculpture, The Man With the Crooked Nose, which the tour guide explained that he had used a man with this imperfection as a model as he could not afford to pay professional models. Rodin wanted to keep a memory of his first work & redid it in marble years later. I learned about Le Baiser. This statue is inspired by Danté’s Inferno (the couple is Paolo and his sister-in-law Francessca), and was originally part of Le Porte d’enfer as well, but was replaced by another couple on the door. Their lips were intentionally not supposed to touch as the intention was to depict them as being interrupted that and they met their demise without their lips ever having touched (and killed by her husband Giovanni!). He first did the model in clay, then much larger in marble. In the model, the couples bodies are not touching anywhere, but they are in the marble statue, due to the nature of the materials (with clay, you are adding material, with marble, you are taking away). To have the man’s arm suspended above the woman’s leg in marble wouldn’t work, as the weight of the arm would just cause it to fall off!

I also learned that Rodin studied under Carrieur-Belleuse and that since all works had to be signed by the ‘master’ of the workshop, he resented not being able to sign his own work for years.

The guide then took us outside to look at Le Porte d’Enfer – flanked by sculptures of Adam & Eve. By this time the sun was beating down & I felt like I was going to pass out at one point! (my pic below is severely overexposed, I know, even after trying to fix it!). She gave us a detailed explanation of this sculpture that was commissioned by a Paris art museum. In the bottom right hand side of the recessed part is a crouched figure with a woman on his shoulders – meant to represent the artist himself & his muse. The tour ended here (which was about half way through the exhibit rooms), so I continued through and found the room dedicated to Camille Claudel’s sculptures. She was one of his students who became his assistant, model, confidante, muse and mistress. Her work is beautiful and looks almost exactly like his, but with cleaner lines. She was committed by her brother apparently – Shawn mentioned that creative woman were often treated like they were crazy (similar to witches), so maybe this was the real reason behind her being detained for her last 30 yrs.

I finished all of the exhibits & was very sleepy. I still had about an hour left before I had to leave to meet Shawn at the Louvre and before closing, so I lay down on a bench (in the sun!) and rested up with a little catnap!

I waited for Shawn in the area we decided on, as you exit the metro underground, right where you enter the lobby of the Louvre, where the inverted pyramid is, but it turns out he was waiting for me by the entrance on the street level outside where the pyramid is! When I finally realized the possible misunderstanding & found him, it was too late to go in! We decided to head out to the La Villette area, where we had wanted to go the night before. We had many restaurants to chose from & after much consideration, we chose a franco-italian one (that may have been the name of it, we don’t remember!). We both chose a seafood pizza, with mussels, calamari & shrimp on it. We were splurging a little (as my coworker that I had replaced on vacation the previous gift had offered us a meal as a thank you!), so we ordered escargots to share as an appetizer and a bottle of red wine (we chose one that wasn’t French for a change!). We were served delicious olives as an appetizer with the customary baguette. We were given little clamps and picks, so we assumed they’d be for the snails & we were excited, never having tried snails in their shells before. Visions of Julia Roberts and the snail flying out of her clamp (‘slippery little suckers!’) came to mind, but when we started eating them, we noticed they slid right out of their shells with the help of the pick easily. They were in a parsley/garlic butter that was divine – what a treat! The pizzas turned out to be huge – we could have easily shared one & could have, but Shawn decided last minute right before ordering to get the same as me rather than what he’d planned! So, I took the other half home for my museum lunch the next day!
After dinner, we strolled around – this was supposed to be 1 of the districts that la plage is supposed to be set up along the Seine, complete with real beach sand, but we couldn’t find it, so we just fooled around with the camera & did a mini-photo shoot to end of the nite.

We look superimposed!

Paris - Day 4 - Tuesday – Intro to modern art, gourmet shops & getting lost!

I had a big day planned for Tuesday & was a little nervous about finding my way around to various destinations on my 2nd day alone in Paris, but I was ambitious & planned out my route with Shawn before he left for work. I started out going to Monoprix (the closest good grocery store to Shawn’s place – about a 30 minute walk away, almost!) as I decided that I should just buy some of those nice packaged sandwiches to bring as my lunches in my bag for my museum visits to save money & aggravation – Shawn said this place had tons of fresh varieties & he could expense them! I made it there ok with his directions & discovered that the ground floor of the store is a Walmart type store with clothes & pharmaceutical items & the upstairs is the grocery store. I realized half way there that I forgot to bring one of the cloth bags I had brought & prayed that they had bags available (Paris is huge on being green & everyone brings their own reusable or cloth bags to the store). I picked up some yogurts, organic bananas & a couple of other things too & luckily there were some plastic bags at the cash, and many shoppers were using them. Had a little trouble getting back to the apartment, but made it, dropped off the stuff & picked up some bottled water at the Franprix on Shawn’s street.

I was about a half an hour behind schedule, but figured I’d still have plenty of time to visit the Palais de Tokyo and have lunch there. I had a little trouble finding the street that the museum was on, but I got to take see some beautiful sights by the water & the Eiffel tower in the distance (as close as I’d been to it so far) & pass by many designer shops! I was relieved when I finally found the place. I knew that there was a Steven Parrino exhibit being shown by my Net research, so I wanted to start off with that when I arrived. When I walked in, the first work I saw was this one, which was titled “Hell’s Gate Shifter”, which I found pretty funny! As I walked around, I saw a white canvas, and other one colour canvases (a lot of black work), which I later found out are called ‘monochromes’. There were a couple of small tvs scattered around on the ground beside some of the works, one with loud motorcycle sounds emanating from it & one with a woman dressed in s&m clothing moving around. There was a small room made of chiprock with holes punched in it. A heap of pink canvas with grey duct tape on it called “Fuckhead bubblegum”. A half a wagon wheel with crumpled up gold foil, rotating on a stand in an exhibit called “Bastard Creature”. In the next room was an exhibit of works that inspired Parrino, including a photo of Courtney Love by Michael Lavine, a signed self-portrait of Andy Warhol, this structure :

and this neon sign work :

I looked around for more exhibits, and came across a “salle noir” – a pitch black room with a bench & projected images on two opposite walls, with a scary, repetitious recording playing in the background. Here was the description of this work by Claire Fontaine : Get Lost is a new video about the fantasies and phantoms that migrate into our imagination from the pages of fashion magazines. These artificial and enhanced faces appear and disappear, accompanied by an endlessly repeated phrase from Hamlet, “I did love you once”. On the floor are photocopies of a 1999 text by the collective Tiqqun, which denounces the alienation of contemporary relations and remind us that we all belong to the same libidinal fabric, that inside capitalism virginity is not possible, and that power-relations always pass through bodies. Wild stuff!

The whole thing was really surreal & strange & I kept thinking to myself “what have I come to see here?!” (and kept thinking how Shawn would probably hate this exhibit & find it too weird!). The second floor of the building was roped off, and upon further inspection, there were not any other exhibits showing that day (to see special programming, you had to go on a Thursday). I had gone through the whole thing in less than an hour! I felt so disappointed that I had spent 6EUR (this place was not on my museum pass, as I had thought). At the front of the museum was a little lounge with a tv and they were playing an interview with the artist Parrino. I decided to have a seat & watch it, since I had lots of time & it was just starting. After watching the video, I understood the work I had just seen a lot more and hearing about his inspirations, the meaning and intention behind his work (he speaks a lot about “boiling it down to the essence” – the key behind “minimalism” art), I felt a lot more inspired. I decided to eat lunch – I had read about their cafeteria & had intended to order the plat de jour for 12EUR, which turned out to be veal, which I didn’t want to take a chance on (sometimes it doesn’t agree with me), so I ordered a piece of 3-cheese quiche which came with an arugula salad with balsamic vinaigrette, from the self-serve counter and ate it outside on a picnic table (the tables under the umbrellas were reserved for the sitdown restaurant diners). It was a beautiful day, so I relaxed with my book for awhile, then went back in & went through the exhibit a second time & I enjoyed it a lot more.

It was still only mid-afternoon and after stepping outside of the museum to take pix, I noticed the musée d’art moderne de Paris right next door, and a sign saying that there were free exhibits! I went in, expected to see just a few works, and ended up spending the afternoon there, seeing so many different & interesting works, set up in a way that takes you through the history of modern art chronologically through the ages. There were daycare classes in some of the rooms sitting on the floor with their monitors doing arts & crafts, which I found such a good idea for an outing for small children. The exhibit started out with some Matisse works and there were more ‘salles noires’.

Some of the noteworthy works I saw included a room full of children’s clothing stacked on shelves, it was on a lower basement floor & it stank of must! Weird!

I got a kick out of this screenprint :

I finished the exhibit in time to leave for my next stop : Fauchon, a famous sweet shop/charcuterie/boulangerie in the Place de la Madeleine area, known for it’s different colored macaroons (4 EUR or more each!). Let me tell you, finding this place was not easy! Paris is a circle in the middle of it with a whole bunch of streets branching out of this circle, so every major intersection is like this & offers like 8 different possible directions! You think you’re traveling in a straight line through the intersection, but then all of the street names change, and if you have a ‘big’ map (not detailed), a lot of these streets don’t appear on it! Plus, some Arab guy was being friendly to me on the street & tried to pick me up, so he distracted me big time! I was just about to give up when I finally found Place de la Madeleine, a strip-mall type of setup in a crescent, but no Fauchon.

Place de la Madeleine

After going around in circles a couple of more times, I looked across the street & saw a huge billboard with Fauchon’s signature pink gift-wrapped lips on it. As I approached what was the OTHER SIDE of Place de la Madeleine, I saw that it read : “Re-ouverture en automne 2007”. I was like ‘NOOOOO!’, thinking I came all this way to find it closed, but then I looked to my right & saw the pink awnings & pink café chairs – I think only 1 of their 3 addresses was closed for renovation. Phew! I didn’t have much time left before meeting Shawn, so I had to hurry through & chose gifts for me & Shawn’s family that we had not bought for yet. I took many pics of the delights offered there & finally chose what I was going to buy. I was running late & knew I’d be at least a few minutes late meeting Shawn at the cheese shop we had planned on having a tasting at for dinner. This place was supposed to be walking distance from where I was, and not a long walk either. But, I could not find my way back to the main street I had walked on previously & while rushing around & panicking & turning in circles, becoming more disoriented as I went along, I knew I was lost. I stopped a cab & knowing I was a lost tourist with a map, he spoke to me in English, told me I was far away from where I wanted to be & that the ride would cost 20 EUR (at least he warned me!) – I said no way, even when he offered it for 15. I located the closest metro I could find, which turned out to be Concorde, only 2-stops from where I was to meet Shawn. When I finally met up with him, it was 45 minutes later than when we were supposed to meet. I prayed he’d wait for me & not go home – without any way to contact one another, I was beyond frustrated! On the way to our meeting spot, I noticed that the address I had was not even a cheese shop, but an apartment building! Needless to say, Shawny was upset & worried when we finally met & it took him a few minutes to realize that I didn’t purposely meet him late & that I really was shaken up from being lost. We asked around at a tabagie & a bar about a cheese shop & were told that there were none around the area, and we were directed to the next district where the bartender knew there was one but didn’t know if it would be open. After much walking & wandering around streets with everything all closed, we literally accidentally ran into l’Androuet – the very cheese shop that we were looking for! But, it closed at 7:30, it was now almost 8:30. I was exhausted & starving. Shawn thought about going out to the La Villette area, but after realizing it was a pretty long metro ride away, we figured we’d probably get home pretty late after supper.

We headed back towards the apartment & decided to eat at a local place that Shawn loves called Chez Justine for a goat cheese salad. It was packed & the service a little slow. We got seated beside a pretty lady with her preteen daughter, they heard us speaking English & struck up a conversation with us. They were from Connecticut & were staying in a house nearby (they swapped houses for 2 wks with friends of theirs). It was their 2nd day there & they seemed a little overwhelmed & slightly frustrated with the language challenge, but were in good spirits & were very friendly. Shawn gave them many tips & ideas on what to do & they were so grateful. They had a credit card issue when paying, so Shawn served as their translator & they were happy about that too. Our food was great, and I was surprised that Shawn enjoys this dish so much (he usually hates hot cheese or pastry and the main part of the salad is a large phyllo package with warm goat cheese inside!). I told him he’s 1-step away from eating things like quiche! We ended up finishing late after all, but least the walk home was a short one.