For our last night in Paris, our friends Annie Marie, Rheanolte, and Rachel said they would come to our neighborhood for dinner since their trip was just getting going as ours was coming to a close and we needed to pack. We ate at Les Comptoirs de Lisbonne, a wonderful Portuguese restaurant on rue Faidherbe, a few blocks from our flat. Sadly I forgot about photos until we'd already eaten our dinners, but it’s highly recommended for a great meal in a friendly, warm place that was very reasonably priced. Especially good was the pork with clams and the grilled fish dishes. Oh, and the pasteís de nata (Portuguese custard tarts)  

On Sunday we decided not to attempt any more sights, but instead to have a relaxed brunch together before Linda and I had to leave for the airport. Parisians are just starting to do brunch as a thing. Rachel's excellent scouting that morning uncovered Paperboy Paris, a cute little place around the corner from their flat. This place might get the award for best use of really small kitchen. 

 Avocado toast (it’s a thing in Paris too) 

Salmon and egg on toasted bun with barbecued beans (taste more like chili beans)

All accompanied by fresh fruit and vegetable juices made to order.

A round of last photos

There are colored pencils to draw on the placemats!

Last two photos before take off

I was remembering that on an earlier trip I'd misread the "Chantier Interdit" sign as singing (chanter) forbidden. But it turns out chantier means construction site.  Very different- here the word is applied to fashion.  

Au revoir Paris.  C'était formidable!

The Jardins des Plantes is only about 5 blocks from the L'Institut du Monde Arabe which was our next stop so we decided to head there for lunch. They have a pretty fancy restaurant overlooking the Seine or a much more budget friendly cafeteria without the view. But it turns out the restaurant becomes the tearoom after the lunch service so you can guess what we did. No pictures of lunch, but it was tasty with three main courses and an appetizer plate you can select from typical Lebanese mezes like humus, babaganoush, coban salad etc. 

The building itself is fascinating- all the widows are constructed of diaphragms that open and close with the sunlight.  From the cafeteria you can see the inside workings of the apertures.  

The main exhibit was "A la plume, au pinceau, au crayon: dessins du monde arabe" (From the pen, the brush, the pencil: design from the Arab World) which included images from the 11th century to the present day  The curators made the point that during the Renaissance, the Arab world didn’t really have the notion of "the artist" as it was conceived in Europe, but that many artisans created intricate designs for their objects.  Present day Arab artists draw from that rich heritage.  Here are some of my favorites:

This one was really interesting- as you walk, the three panels appear to move and shift relationship  sorry in retrospect that I didn’t take a video  

Saturday we met at the Jardin des Plantes which is not one of the typical tourist sights. It dates back to the 17th century, though it came into its own as a park for the people after the French Revolution. It is sort of a combination botanic garden, science and industry museum, zoo, and exhibition space. 

The day we were there, the poppies were out in beautiful force ( les coquelicots - one of my favorite French words to say). 

In amongst the poppies were the largest ornamental rainbow chards I've ever seen, perhaps harkening back to the garden's original purpose as an herbarium. 

As we continued, this chiropractor's eye was caught by a ginormous vertebra on the lawn (turned out to be a sculpture) - dinosaur skeleton perhaps?

We also strolled through the rose garden

By then we were ready to sit and to eat so we passed on the little zoo, but not before getting a peek at the panda rouge  S/he was a little camera shy so we had to crib a photo from the zoo poster:

Friday our little troop headed off to Chartres to see the cathedral and the old medieval town. The forecast originally included rain and there was a bit, but the afternoon was spectacular. We arrived in time to walk the church's famous labyrinth in the morning.  We were part of a fairly small group, some  chanting, others praying quietly. My favorite part was when you reach the center while waiting to step into the very center, there is a slightly larger circle surrounded by half- circle "petals".  The person in the center is therefore surrounded by  a ring of other labyrinth "pilgrims" if there are enough people walking at the same time.  Walking felt more solitary, but the central ring felt like a more communal experience. A sign nearby said that in older times, the archbishop would walk the labyrinth on certain occasions, carrying a yellow ball of fabric.  When he reached the center he would toss the ball back and forth with congregants standing around the labyrinth's edges in a festive, celebratory game.  

They’re in the (lengthy) process of cleaning the cathedral walls. This shot shows the difference between the part that’s finished and the part that is yet untouched. 

Lunch was at La Picoterie - a little crêperie where they had two whole pages of gluten free buckwheat crêpes - a great find for Rachel and I. I had a local specialty with mustardy duck sausage and apples and a crêpe underneath. Linda had a traditional one with bacon, cheese and potatoes.  Rachel's, with cheese, ham, and poached pear was by far the most beautifully presented 

After lunch, we took a walk through the old cathedral town and had coffee, tea, and Linda got to have a paumier, something she loved as a student in Paris 

This house, the Maison de Saumon has wood timbers dating back to the 1500s. Large wood carvings are incorporated into the design, including a large salmon from which the house gets its name

This one says something like "If you suffer from thirst or hunger, you’ll find good food and drink here". Unclear whether this is a literal advertisement or a metaphorical/biblical statement. 

Like all tourist attractions, there’s no lack of schlocky stuff, but this one made us laugh

In the afternoon we were scheduled to have a tour with Malcolm Miller, the famous guide to the Cathedral and its windows. Unfortunately he was ill so my travel buddies had to make do with me reading bits of a badly organized guide book. Still, with two clergy people a pastor's wife, and a preacher's kid, we were able to work out some of the stories in the windows.  I do recall, from Miller's tour decades ago, that he pointed out that the windows were a way of teaching biblical stories to illiterate people - kind of like the PowerPoint slides of their day. A lot more durable though - some date back 8 centuries. These are pictures cribbed from the internet.  My iPhone wasn’t equal to the task (or perhaps it was the iPhotographer).

An interesting feature was the inclusion of the sponsors of each window in the bottom scenes. For example, the carpenters or cobblers or the famous rich guy would be featured as if to say, "Brought to you by..." Here’s an example (cribbed from soniahalliday.com) featuring the stonemasons 

The afternoon sun made the windows more brilliant and added new drama to some of the sights inside and outside the cathedral.  

Since we had planned a whole day here, , I had also made a reservation at Café Bleu, a restaurant very near the cathedral for convenience sake. You might expect a restaurant so near tourist/pilgrim central to be of lower quality, but we were very pleasantly surprised.  My risotto primavera had salad and perfectly cooked vegetables on top of it.  Also beautiful were Linda’s gamberi arrabiata and Annie Marie's sea bream.  

But the show stopper was Rachel's strawberry Pavlova  

Thursday afternoon was a beautiful sunny one so it was perfect for a leisurely trip down the San Martin Canal which is part of a canal network developed under Napoleon. It takes two and a half hours and involves passing through 9 locks, under bridges, and eventually through an underground tunnel that lets out into the Seine. The boat we took also passed by both islands and dropped us by the Musée D'Orsay. 

My friend John says he likes the trip because you have to relax. Perhaps some took that idea too seriously 

Then again, it does have a lulling effect 

The part in the tunnel is pretty cool - in both senses of the word

Afterwards we had some time to kill before our dinner reservation so we hung out for a while at a sweet pop-up cafe on the Seine

After a bit of caffeine and people watching, we headed over to Pasco, a restaurant in the 7th Arrondissement that I just happened to find on TripAdvisor. It was fabulous.  The people were gracious and patient with our bad French and varied dietary issues, the ambience was great (looking out on the dome of the Madeleine as the sun got lower), and the food was outstanding.  Pictured are buffala with pine nuts, raspberries, and roquet, salmon with roasted fennel and avocado, dorade with artichokes and a lemon-mustard emulsion, bread crusted rabbit with potato bacon cake (hopefully this program will upload them in the correct order)  

The desserts were also fabulous- baba au rhum (you add the rum), strawberries with meringue and ice cream, profiteroles, and a fruit tarte

As we waited for our cab, we got to enjoy the view a bit longer

What a great finish to a great day!

Thursday we joined up with our friends Annie Marie, Rheanolte, and  Rachel to see the Atelier des Lumières light show on VanGogh. They promised it would be immersive and the show did not disappoint. 

The whole room, floors, and any structures were part of the show 

A second show, focused on Japanese drawings - also stunning

Rheanolte made a new friend afterwards. 

For lunch we hit a Turkish kebab house.  Very tasty.  I wish I'd noted the name of my dish, described as "aubergine caviar" with lamb and yoghurt.  Our waiter also introduced us to a new beverage (though she said it was old - at least 50 years)  it’s a type of lemonade that’s pronounced pretty much the way it looks  

Wednesday we decided to keep it light so we went over to the Île de la Cité for a stroll. We began at Nôtre Dame - or what you can see of it from outside the cordoned off area (reinforced by lots of cops - some with sub-machine guns). The tower tops are visible and the roof which is now covered and scaffolded with big cranes attending. 

Next we wandered over to the flower market. My memory was of an open air event, but now it’s mostly covered. Don’t know if that’s change or faulty memory. It seemed a fair number of them specialize in one or two types of flower. I don’t think I've ever seen so many types of hydrangeas before (or hortensia as they’re called in French). 

Along the way we heard this young man's rendition of Cohen's Hallelujah

As we crossed over to the sister island, the Île Saint Louis, we happened on these elder performers who were showing how it’s done

By then we were ready for lunch - moules frites and grilled chêvre salad  

We continued our stroll, keeping an eye out for the residence where LInda stayed as a student on her semester abroad.  Memory was vague, but we found it!

A few other shots along the way - including a puppet shop which ended up being more of a "Linda picture " than intended - I couldn’t avoid the reflection

i waited to write about this because I found it very disturbing and wanted to think more about it. We visited the exhibit "Black models: from Géricault to Matisse". The stated goal of the exhibit is to explore the "aesthetic, political, social and racial issues as well as the imagery unveiled by the representation of black figures in visual arts, from the abolition of slavery in France (1794) to the modern day."  Good so far as it goes, but there were a number of disturbing elements in my opinion.  There was way too much focus on a narrative about how "things were bad then , though there were some heroic white artist abolitionists who really turned things around" kind of stories  

The exhibit purported to be focused on the models and there was an interesting trend from early to later works where the early ones were arranged by artists whereas the later ones were arranged by the model sitting for them.  However, while they stated that it was hard to get information on the early models' identities, there seemed to me to be a carelessness in treating the early models' images which were often naked, exposed, sometimes shackled or bound with no consideration of how it would feel to sit for such a painting or photo. I also wondered where was the analysis of the sexual politics, the S/M aspect of many of the images and the power dynamics expressed.  There were some devastating mentions of history new to me (and I would imagine to others) without any commentary - e.g. the placement of an item on a time line - "the First Human Zoo 1877 Jardin d'Acclimation" with no other information [for a discussion - see this link which is also weird in its tone, but does give some data https://frenchmoments.eu/when-the-jardin-dacclimatation-was-a-human-zoo/].  At another point there is a very early film of people from the African Village in Paris swimming - again no info. What African Village? How did it get there?  Were the people free to leave?

I took very few photos because it felt like I would be further exposing exploited people. But here are a few. One of my favorite writers growing up was Alexandre Dumas. However I was in my 40s before I learned he was black. There was an interesting display of portraits of him - which varied hugely regarding his features depending on the artist's attitude about him and their ability/willingness to see beyond stereotypic features  

Aicha Goblet was a performer and model for several artists in Montparnasse in the early Twentieth century. I took a photo of this one by Vallotton because it seemed to me to be one she might value herself.  Some of the others were more abstract, but they made me wonder where does the line between stylized features and stereotypical ones lie?  In order to paint an abstract, some seemed just to add bigger lips and kinky hair.

 In a photo of an art class in the early 1900s, there was a black model posed with the entire art class  she is the only naked person  she is not posing for the students  she is hanging out with them - naked, while they are all fully clothed.  It made me feel for her vulnerability and angry that no one thought to give her a wrap of some kind for the group photo. 

Upstairs there was an exhibit with young artists' reacting to some of the images from a more current point of view. I particularly liked this one which, in my mind, corrected what was wrong with the original while calling attention to its flaws  

Then there was this one flipping the races of the two women in the original 

Or this one

Lots to think about and a lot more to learn.  

Tuesday we began at the Musée D'Orsay, which is always enjoyable for the building itself, a converted railway station, as well as for the exhibits. 

In the 1990s, the Impressionists collection formerly housed in the Jeu de Paume was moved to the D'Orsay  Some of the most famous works by Renoir, Monet, Gaughin, and others are included  Here are a few favorites not quite so well known (by Signac, Luce, and Sisley)

I also loved this one by Rosa Bonheur

We took a break for lunch in the Café Campana where the food is only so-so, but you get to eat "inside" the old clock.  Linda had a great time playing with the reflected light and shiny surfaces.  The red wire stuff makes it look like you’re penned in, but it feels different when you're inside it  

Afterward, we wandered around the Latin Quarter a bit and stopped for some café sitting time near the Cluny Museum 

Other interesting sights were the cleaners with a bas relief of a woman doing laundry and this street near the medical school named for the French physician DuPuytren,

We finished our day at a Sardinian restaurant suggested by our friend John.  Delicious seafood.  Linda had a spectacular pasta and shrimp dish with saffron, coriander, and ginger while I had one of my favorites- grilled sardines 

The last time we were in Paris, we happened to hear of a relatively new park placed on top of an old elevated railway line (sound familiar?). It actually preceded the Highline and was the source of the idea for the one we love so much in Manhattan. Like the Highline, it’s since been extended and now even "includes" some buildings built around it. The first time we walked it, the trees and bushes were much lower so you saw more frequent vistas out along the roofs and boulevards. There are still areas where you see across, but it has a more secluded feeling in general. 

People jog on it and there’s a later part with a bike path. The sign says "This is a space for walking. Jogging is tolerated to the extent that it doesn’t bother the walkers". Unclear whether that’s enforced in any way or just an aspiration. There’s also a parcours spot just below  

Under the park there are shops, workspaces, and a couple of restaurants. When we were here last, the emphasis was on artisans workshops and stores that sold artisanal goods. Now there seem to be far more high end interior design stores and similar, though we still saw people making shoes, working wood, blowing glass, a piano repair shop and a luthier (where they make stringed instruments)