Kelley is again at the keyboard to describe our fun Friday, March 12
It is difficult to explain the wonder that is La Grande Epicerie, especially for foodies. Ostensibly a grocery store, but so much more, this mammoth market is a combination of shelves and serving stations that has beckoned us three times in a week. (http://www.lagrandeepicerie.fr/#en-GB/home)
For Rusty’s and Stacy’s final Parisian lunch we chose quiche, Panini, and a baguette Rusty and I split and then overloaded with bricks of paté, likely 6-8 servings each (and more fat grams than a sumo wrestler consumes), topped with cheese and white-hot mustard. It was American gross excess at its best, but our coats sure are shiny!
Stuffed, we hopped the metro for Musee D’Orsay, where anyone’s gluttony for French impressionist art would be sated. It’s an almost unbelievable collection, a “greatest hits of art” lineup: Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Toulouse Lautrec, Manet, Rodin, Degas, Cezanne.
Hundreds of paintings organized in a very doable, two-story gallery framework in a converted train station. It continued our “gross excess” theme in a non-caloric, art appreciation direction. But still, it was no less an unprecedented feast.
If you spent as much time pondering each canvas and sculpture as it deserved, you could spend as much time here as you might at the Louvre, though you wouldn’t walk so far. Musee D’Orsay is an absolute must on any tourist’s trip to
Neil, one half of our host couple, returned from
Neil ordered for us with input about our favorite Thai dishes. Every bite as we noshed our way, family style, through three appetizers and three entrees was excellent. Neil explained that the Thai restaurants in
When we emerged about 10 p.m. we realized the weather had warmed up, and we enjoyed a less bundled up stroll to the Hotel Duquesne, where we sat at café tables out front and enjoyed a drink while Rusty burned through his final cigar in Paris, this one a Cuban.
We bid adieu to our friends, whom we’ll miss during our second week here. We were fortunate to find a couple whose ideas of what was fun, how much was enough, and what the general pace of the days should be, were all right in tune with ours!
Au revoir, mes amis!
Kelley
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