Rainy Days and Art

We've been abandoned by that glorious sun of the last few days and the streets are wet and shiny.  Kids coming from school are bundled up in hooded coats, leaving their backpacks to get soaked.  With any luck the ink on their homework assignments will run and they won't have to complete them.  You can tell what kind of student I was, can't you?

My path today took me through the Place des Vosges.  On many days, in fact, my path takes me through the Place des Vosges, a circumstance that once seemed so far from likely as to be almost unimaginable. Sorry to belabor the point, but I still can't believe I'm writing that.  Okay, deep breath.  Today I held an umbrella in one hand, trying not to get too wet, while simultaneously taking a picture of the naked headless mannekins mooning me from their 17th century perch.  My head spins.

I was on the way to an exhibition appropriate to a rainy day, a collection of Flemish paintings from Transylvania.  The Samuel Brukenthal Collection, which includes Breughel, Memling and Van Eyck, among others, was on display at the Musée Jacquemart-André.  I love this museum, which was left to the state by Nélie Jacquemart, who with her husband Edouard André spent a considerable fortune collecting  art and filling their huge townhouse with it.  They were talented collectors, amassing not only French paintings but also a spectacular collection of Italian art, including the large Tiepolo fresco on the main staircase and of all things, a Tiepolo on the ceiling of the café, which was once the dining room.

Unfortunately the rooms set aside for special exhibitions like the Flemish one are quite small and because the shows tend to attract large numbers of viewers, it gets a little crowded in there, particularly when the museum allows guides to take groups through and stand blocking the paintings for many minutes.  Do I sound annoyed?  I was very polite, though, as I elbowed my way past them.

A prohibition on picture taking inside stopped me from photographing the paintings, but how could they object to me pointing the camera outside from the window of the grand ballroom?

Wandering through the Weekend

You may not believe this, but one can get tired of croissants.  Not that I have yet, but it's possible, I understand.  And so ex-pat Americans are always in search of the perfect bagel. You can find bagels in Paris and some of them are reputed to be not bad, but the search continues.

On Saturday night I went to a book signing for Marc Grossman's new cookbook "Bagels*like in New York" at the charming little food-specialized bookstore La Cocotte on rue Paul Bert.

Marc is a New Yorker who runs Bob's Juice Bar (why Bob? I guess Marc sounds too French) and the Kitchen in Paris, both foodie favorites.  Bagels is his third American cookbook (in French) after Smoothies and Muffins.  You get the idea.  Alisa's Cupcakes is part of this series for French publisher Marabout and she'll get her book signing date soon.

Unfortunately Marc says that making good bagels in enough quantity to sell profitably is too difficult a project and he won't be offering them at his shops.  The search continues.  What, you thought I was going to bake them myself?

Gene had come down with a cold so I took the Métro over to meet Alisa, her boyfriend Jeff, and her two adorable girls at La Cocotte and for a drink after at Pure Café.  I'm not a fan of children as a rule, but these two are worth hanging out with. When we got to the café I realized it was the one from the movie Before Sunset, with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, a gorgeous tour of Paris in the guise of a love story. 

On the way over to La Cocotte I came across one of the ubiquitous Métro musical offerings, which include American hippie guitarists, Scots bagpipers (oh gawd!) and others.  This little orchestra was worth listening to though.

Suitably uplifted I went on and found continung uplift at the other end of the trip.  The end of the day sun had turned these buildings into pure gold.

Sunday morning was time for the market once again and we did our usual rounds.  We've now identified our favorite vendors: the pretty Italian woman who recommends different pastas each time, the woman who takes the time to explain the different types of apples, pear, tomatoes, etc. to clueless Americans, the fishmonger with the longest line and freshest fish, and the stand with the incredible array of mushrooms.  Winter vegetables are all over; I'll have to find a recipe for pumpkin soup.

It was a glorious fall day and the crowds in the Marais were taking full advantage of it.  The streets were closed off to cars and the Place des Vosges lawns were covered with basking adults and running children.

 

I took a bus across the river to say goodbye to some friends leaving town and couldn't resist taking pictures out the window.  I have a feeling these blue skies won't be with us for very much longer.

 

And walking home I found myself kicking through piles of leaves.  The season has definitely changed.

 

Snapping Away at the World

I used to be a bit embarrassed about pulling out my little camera and snapping away at anything that caught my eye.  Wouldn't want anyone to think I'm a tourist, would I?  Now it never even crosses my mind.  How to resist trying to capture the momentary light slanting across that building front as one bank of cloud moves away and before the next covers the sun? 

How can you not record the sudden appearance of this icon when you turn around and find her looming at the end of the street?  And when the need to buy train tickets takes you to the Gare de Lyon, how not to take pictures of Le Train Bleu, the bar where you have a coffee?

What remains difficult is taking pictures of people.  Easy enough when they're turned away or so occupied in doing something that they don't notice, like these musicians playing in Place Colette, just in front of the Comèdie Française,

or this young flutist mesmerizing his little audience under the arcades of the Place des Vosges,

but I'm not yet quick enough nor confident enough to shoot the fast-moving long-legged young women dressed all in black who are here for Fashion Week, or the older man impeccably dressed in a tan coat over a yellow vest and red patterned scarf around his neck, hat turned just so, and an unlit pipe in his mouth.

But I'm working on it.  I wasn't quick enough to get this intense young reader coming, but I caught him going.  

Atonement

Jewish holidays begin and end at sundown. Thus the holiest day of the calendar, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, began yesterday evening and ends at sundown today. There are two synagogues within a couple of blocks of us and we decided we would try to attend the opening prayer service, Kol Nidre, at the one in the Place des Vosges, which I seemed to recall was Ashkenazi, i.e. the Eastern European branch of Judaism, as opposed to Sephardic, i.e. the descendants of Spanish Jews, many of whom are from North Africa and the Middle East.

We were ushered to seats on the third floor of the building as all the ones in the main sanctuary had been already alloted, and waited for sundown, which is determined by the ability to see the first star in the evening sky. I was struck as I sat there, looking out the open windows to the other stone and brick buildings of the Place des Vosges, with the thought that all over the world, varying only with the traverse of the sun through the sky, Jews were doing the same thing, and had been doing it for millennia.

Place des Vosges by objetsparis.

The leader of the service opened it with a talk that said essentially the same thing. He realized, he said, that many if not most of those present were not regular attendants at religious services, that it had been generations since many of them had done so, but that something brought them back on this day to connect with their ancestors and with the remainder of their people. Celebrating this holiday in a place where a generation ago these same people would have been, and in some cases had been, the subjects of an unbelievable horror felt like a privilege and an honor.

Lazily we float along

Port de l'Arsenal, by objetsparis.

It came as a surprise to me when I found that there was a marina in the heart of Paris, something I discovered a few years ago when I spent a lot of time at the semi-annual Brocante held at Place de la Bastille. In between the stands of antiquaires I glimpsed pleasure craft lined up at the quai and had to go investigate.

If the Blogger software didn't cut off some of the picture you could see on the far right of the photo the column in the middle of the Place de la Bastille. We find ourselves now living just around the corner, sandwiched neatly between that Place and the lovely 17th century Place des Vosges, which we walked through this evening on the way home from a stroll. We keep pinching ourselves.

For some reason I haven't been taking as many photos as usual and having been having some difficulty uploading the ones I do take. Bear with me, I'll hit my stride soon.