Paris Day Five — Louvre and Lunch

Catching up…

Sunday was filled with two big activities, the Louvre and a two hour, leisurely lunch.

We started at the Louvre. It was SIL’s and my second time, but the first for BIL and Mrs Poolman. It’s simply amazing. Pictures are below. We concentrated on the Greek sculptures. The “Grand Gallery” of Rennaisance painters and the Near East antiquities.

It was BIL’s birthday, so we went to the famous and highly recomended Le Fumoir for brunch. It wasn’t quite what we expected, because they were set up for a brunch, not a regular lunch menu. All the same, everyone said they enjoyed it.  I had a white pizza. Mrs P had eggs benedict.

After our second round at the Louvre, we headed back to the apartment. (We are giving the Metro system a workout.)

Most of our merry ban were very tired. SIL went right to bed at six o’clock and BIL was down by seven.

I took off for my second solo evening walk, this time to try to catch the “golden hour” light down by the Seine. I took a bunch of pictures during twilight and talked to a bunch of people. A pair of Australian girls wanted me to take their picture. (That IS what I do.) A couple of French guys couldn’t figure ou their camera, and an Asian couple asked for help with their photo. Before I returned to the apartment, I got into a nice conversation with an Australian couple of around our age. It was a very pleasant time on a bridge over the Seine.

The pyramid at the Louvre

Mrs P

She really is amazing.

Mrs P was getting ideas for her next decoration project.

Soon our house will look like this.

These would look very nice by our pool.

A little soft porn in the French neo-classical section?

Vermeer is one of my favorites.

A white pizza for brunch.

The Seine at dusk. Orsay at the right and Notre Dame in the distance.

The Tour Eiffel and Pont Alexander III

Advertisement

OCD running wild

I’m a bit of a geek, and, as I’ve already discussed, I am mildly OCD.

I’m not an expert on anything, but I know a little bit about a lot of subjects. Almost all of it is totally useless trivia. I “play” Jeopardy when the show is on almost every evening and usually do pretty well. This trait came in handy as a journalist and still makes me a good partner in Trivial Pursuit. Otherwise it is pretty useless, and sometimes annoying to friends and family. Sorry ‘bout that. 

Some of this trivial knowledge comes from the fact that I have always read a lot, and remember a lot of what I read. Some of it, especially science and art, comes from the outstanding high school I attended (Mt. Lebanon HS in suburban Pittsburgh), and a rather diverse collection of courses at the University of Florida (That’s what you get when you change your major three times.)

As a high school senior, I took a course in “Humanities” from an excellent teacher, Joanne Bailey.  It covered art, architecture and music from ancient through modern times. As a result, I have a superficial knowledge of art and art history. (For the most part, music was a lost cause for me.) I’m no expert by any stretch, but I am just slightly conversant in some of the periods of art history, styles and some of the major figures.

This brings me to an incident a couple of weeks ago. Mrs. Poolman and I were watching the ABC sitcom, “Suburgatory.” 

In this episode, “Tessa” talks her neighbor “Dallas” into taking her into New York City for an afternoon. In one scene, the two are standing before a painting in an art museum and arguing whether it would be for sale. Dallas wanted to buy it, but Tessa said, “It’s not for sale.”

I looked at Mrs. Poolman and said, “I doubt it would be for sale. That’s a Degas.” I don’t recall ever seeing that particular painting before, and everything I knew about Edgar Degas could be written on the back of my fingernail.  For some reason, I was able to ID the artist, or so I thought anyway. However, quickly I had self-doubt and felt the compulsion to see if my impulse ID  was correct.  (That’s the OCD part.)

I did what anyone else in the 21^st century would do; I Googled “Degas” and “Metropolitan Museum of Art” to try to locate the painting. I searched high and low and could not find the painting in question, certainly not at the Met. Finally, I expanded my search and eventually located the painting. Here it is.

Dance Foyer at the Opera -- Edgar Degas

I couldn’t find it at the Met, simply because it isn’t there. It’s permanently housed at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, and to the best my search could find, has never visited the Met.

Then I realized, “Stupid me!,” the producers didn’t go to a museum to shoot the scene with the painting. The show is probably shot in Los Angeles anyway. They simply got a poster of a painting and used it in a studio shot.

The bottom line is –the poster in the TV show probably is for sale, for about $19.99 on line or in a museum gift shop.

I shared this experience with Mrs. Poolman, thinking that maybe she would be interested in the solution to the mystery. She just sighed deeply, and her eyes rolled back into her head. A little cartoon balloon appeared above her head:  “What did I do to deserve this?”

A day at the Louvre

After a fairly late start, we decided to put off touring the Cathedral of Notre Dame until tomorrow, and concentrated our touring day on the Louvre. It was a good choice.

We started off with a quick breakfast at a sandwich shop around the corner from the hotel. The hot ham and cheese on a baguette was very good.

Our friend Cindy came into town from their hotel near the airport and met us in front of the museum.

The Louvre is every bit as impressive as it is said to be.

A view from an upstairs window, with the Eiffel Tower in the distance.

I was a little concerned I would push Birdie and Ron a little too far, but that was not the case. We arrived at noon and didn’t walk out until 6:30 pm. They were as interested at the end as they were at the beginning.

We started with the ancient Greeks

Hall of greek sculpture

Aphrodite???

Cindy (on the left) assuming a classic pose.

and then moved to the Italian Renaissance section. Before we were done, we managed to hit many, many of the highlights.

A special exhibit hall

Birdie -- posing for a Peter-Paul Rubens portrait. Sorry, Birdie, you may have a Rubenesque figure, but it's not going to work.

Way back in high school, I took a two-semester course as a senior on Humanities. It covered art, music and architecture. The music part is still pretty-much lost on me, but some of the other material stuck. More than 40 years later, it paid off. Thanks, Mrs. Bailey!

Birdie has been a never-ending source of material for these postings. Today, as usual, he was wearing his University of Alabama ball cap. Some other guy, apparently an Auburn fan came up to him and got face to face. The exchange went like this.

Other guy: “War Eagle!”

Birdie: “Excuse me?”

Other guy: “You red elephants are all the same.”

Birdie: “Pardon me, sir, but you really need to take your comments to someone else.”

You go all the way to the Louvre in Paris, and you can’t escape!

As we were wandering through the section with the Dutch and Flemish masters, Birdie asked me if we could find the original painting of the poker playing dogs. I told him I believe that was located — along with all the portraits of Elvis Presley painted on black velvet — in the “Red Neck Museum of Tacky Modern Art” in Talladega, Ala.

Both Ron and Birdie has special interest in any of the art that related to hunting or already-dead animals. This bronze of a hunter slaying a stag was their favorite.

Ron & Birdie with the stag hunter

We took the crowded Metro back to our hotel.

The rush hour Metro

I let myself get distracted by a very cute little girl of about 9 months of age. She was very interested in making faces at the strange guy standing next to her mother. (Mrs. Poolman will tell you that is an occupational hazard of traveling with me.) We got off at the right stop, but in my distraction, I forgot that wasn’t our final destination. We were outside the ticket gates before we realized we had to get back on another train to reach our hotel. Of course, neither of the other guys picked up on it either, so I didn’t feel too bad. It amounted to just one wasted Metro ticket, so no serious harm done.

When we got back to the hotel, Birdie and Ron started wondering about the strange towel in their bathroom. It is a towel-heater. They turned it on just to see how it would work. Apparently it heated up just fine, because Birdie commented, “Damn, Ron, you could cook a chicken on this thing.”

On the issue of hotels, ours is quite nice. It is a small city hotel. The rooms are not all that large, but they are very nice.

My hotel room.

The view out my window.

The two young ladies who have run the front desk this week have been super helpful.  (I do think they are amused by our efforts to communicate in French. They both speak English quite well. ) I’d come back to the Holiday Inn Paris Elysees in a heartbeat.

We had a nice dinner at a café right down the street.

Tomorrow, we will head out to the airport hotel early to drop off our bags for the next night and pick up my bother, Dan. If the weather holds, we will tour Notre Dame and the Musee d’ Orsay (Impressionist art).

It’s been two good days so far. We’re looking forward to hooking up with the tour group and the rest of the trip.