Brian's engine broke down. He woke up with a sore throat and a runny nose. All the walking, all the massive infusions of culture, are bound to have that effect. We slowly made our way out of the hotel to visit the Musee Picasso because it was only a few blocks away from the hotel. Our morning pain au chocolats were still warm so we ate them while walking down the street. I wondered if this were proper until I saw a well-heeled woman doing the same. The Musee Picasso occupies a grand hotel of the Marais neighborhood, refurbished to showcase Picasso's artwork sold to France to settle his estate tax. My personal feeling about Picasso is that he really was an extraordinary painter until fame went to his head and he was just began taking the piss. From the amount of materials in the museum, he was extremely proficient in nearly every medium. By his death, he could spit paint on a canvas and find some feeble critic to call it a masterpiece. The current temporary exhibit tried to establish direct and indirect links between Picasso and Ingres, in a subtle manner that didn't pound anything into the viewer's head. The garden had a cafe where we took coffee and sat to read. Brian decided he could carry on so we walked slowly to do some shopping. I bought two shirts from Muji and oil pastels, notebook, and incense (gift for Heather). At Confisserie Rivoli bought several Eiffel Tower-shaped chocolates for assorted persons. Mariage Freres is a tea shop--all loose tea is kept in containers behind a counter. You must ask a clerk to bring down a container to get a sniff. That seemed too daunting so I stuck to the prepackaged goods. My favorite tea description is from box of iced tea bags: "...an ode to extraordinary journeys to mystical distant lands". Headed back north to a lunch restaurant (we found out it was lunch only when we tried to go there for dinner) recommended by Chocolate and Zucchini. The menu changes daily. Brian had a carrot ricotta tart and I had a the duck wok dish. The waitress looked like she was going to have a heart attack from lunch grind stress. Brian went back to the hotel to nurse his cold; I went down to the river to sketch. The weather was against me though--fat raindrops in the sunshine. Whenever I turned around, groups of schoolchildren had surrounded me. Taking a more abstract view of the matter, I proposed the following trade. Midtown Manhattan, complete with Broadway and Times Square, for the Parisian banks of the Seine. Grass is greener whatever, of course, but let's not tell anyone until the trade is complete that there is no grass in midtown.
The second attempt at visiting the Musee d'Orsay went much better--the museum is open late on Thursday nights. I'll skip the descriptions, except to say that I never really appreciated the work of Odilon Redon in the past. One man, trailed by his wife, was taking a digital picture of every painting in the Impressionist galleries. And a man was taking pictures of every work on his digital camera. Back to the hotel around 10.30; I read for a few hours (my holiday ideal).
