A wonderful Friday!

1) Statue in park outside Musee Marmottan
2) Outside of Musee Marmottan
3, 4 & 5) Inside of Galeries Lafayette, looking up into the dome!

Allo! Allo!

Wow, we’re just now finishing up our second week here! Where has the time gone???

Woke to a cloudy but non-raining day. Breakfasted and cleaned up a bit (getting REALLY tired of having drying laundry around all the time!!) and decided to head to the Musée Marmottan – Claude Monet out near the Bois du Bologne. To be honest, we’ve been multiple times to the Musée d’Orsay, and, while they have a wonderful collection of impressionist art, (and an architecturally very interesting building!) we really prefer the intimate nature of the Marmottan…and I’m rather down on waiting in lines at the moment!

So…R worked out the bus lines, and while I’d hoped to be there by 10 a.m. opening time, it does take a while for those buses to make their way through the city! Did pass some interesting places – the Afghanistan embassy (!) as well as Gabon’s. Arrived around 10:25 – only to find that the museum was CLOSED! (Is it us, or what?? … beginning to take this personally!) But, they said it would open at 11 a.m. Right… We walked back through the lovely park to La Muette where we found a nice café/restaurant to have a coke and a cup of coffee “Americane.” Relaxed for half an hour or so and then headed back.

The door finally opened around 11:05, and then it took – literally – another 20 minutes to process through the first 20 people!! It was UNREAL! They had one woman who obviously didn’t know how to work a credit card machine … I was willing to just hand her the 20 E(uro) note and let it go at that, but no….it must have taken her at least an hour to process in the people who were waiting!! As I said – UNREAL – but, once we did get in (around 25/26 or so…) at least we basically had the place to ourselves!! Took a good look around the basement level, which holds most of the Monets – truly beautiful. Unfortunately, NO photography, so you’ll need to google the Musée Marmottan to look at their collection. A new exhibit had premiered yesterday, which was Monet to Joan Mitchell. Very interesting, seeing some of the ways impressionism was represented in later generations; lots of very nice work, as well as a whole new slew of Monet’s we didn’t remember seeing before! All in all, an incredible place if you like Monet – which we do.

By the time we were finished looking, it was after 12, and still no lunch. We did NOT want a big lunch, as our recent experience has been that if we eat a big lunch, we don’t want to cook a big dinner – and we have chicken waiting in the fridge! Caught the 32 bus directly in front of the museum, heading toward Galleries Lafayette. Visited the food halls first, and picked up a few odds and ends … can ALWAYS find something to buy in a grocery store! They’re like bookstores! Then headed over to the 6^th floor cafeteria, where we did their salad bar – definitely different from the U.S., but very good! Lots of vegetables, paella with tuna, tomatoes and corn salad, green beans and couscous. Yum! Then headed to the 7^th floor (that is, the roof), for a look around – patches of blue sky, and a lovely view over the Opera and toward theTour Eiffel.

From there, we headed back to the flat, as we had things to drop off, and R had a few emails to send. I also was anxious to start my newest Wentworth wooden jigsaw puzzle that I picked up at the museum!

Once R was finished with his work, we headed out across town once again – this time to see the Statue of Liberty #3, on the Ile de Grenelle. While I had seen the Statue of Liberty here several times passing on the RER, I’d never REALLY seen it up close – and I hadn’t even realized that there was another island in the Seine, that nobody every talks about! The Statue is on that island, at the very end! We took the bus to the Pont de Grenelle, then walked over the bridge and down to the Statue. It’s really beautiful – and we did spend a few minutes trying to figure out where Benjamin Gates and Riley were standing when they were here looking at #3 in the latest National Treasure movie! Will have to see it again, I’m afraid…Then we decided to take the path, Allee des Cygnes (Swan’s Way) as far as it would go! And, it led us to the end of the island, where we climbed up on the Pont Bir Hakim, yet another very attractive bridge!

From here we figured it was time to head home – getting crowded on a Friday night! We were able to catch the bus at Bir Hakim, and with only one transfer, voila, as they say, we were home again!

R is now cooking up that chicken; the flat smells WONDERFUL; lots of shallots and garlic! That will go along with haricots verts (R getting tired of them, but my reasoning is that this is the ONLY place we can get them so fresh – so we’ll just have to O.D. on them while we’re here!) and potatoes – and, I stopped at our boulangerie and procured two wonderful looking tartes framboise (raspberry tarts)…so! In for the evening, after another truly wonderful day!

Our friend Linda has suggested that we look for fabric on the hill leading to Sacre Coeur in Montmartre…really wish our friend Anne was here to help us with that; NO idea at all how much of anything to buy! However, we can get the dimensions of our dining room table off the Stickley website, and may give it a go tomorrow – if R can convert the inches to whatevers…I certainly can’t! So – possibly a shopping expedition tomorrow!! Who knows?

Take care, all; much love!
m