Musee d'Orsay

We had set aside two days--European Heritage Days, when lots of places are open with free admission--to see the d'Orsay. (The Louvre does not participate in the Heritage Days scheme; too big to fail, I guess.) In any case, we managed to do the d'Orsay in just the one day. Whole floors and rooms were closed, for whatever reasons. But the stuff we came to see, the Impressionists and post-Impressionists, and the Art Nouveau furniture, etc., were all open and there and just as we'd remembered from our last visit in 2019. I think this was probably our 8th or 9th visit to this museum, whose scope is limited pretty much to just the latter half of the 19th century. The museum had a "no fotos!" policy at various times, which I complied with casually, but on our last visit I took lots of pix, which are mostly at https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2019/06/musee-dorsay-favorites.html, and https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2019/07/musee-dorsay-art-nouveau.html. An additional post from the wonderful 2019 Berthe Morisot exhibition is at https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2019/07/musee-dorsay-berthe-morisot.html. Anyhow, we were there September 18th, loving it all over again. I'll limit the pix to just a few things I haven't posted before.

Sorry; I've been taking these d'Orsay clock pix since 1998 and
can't resist, especially with the ugly crane now in view; I'm
fascinated by the changing light, the seasons, the time of day...

Three wall pano of Renoir females

I could only get two walls of the Monet Houses of Parliament, Rouen cathedral, etc.

Renoir's City Dance and Country Dance

Renoir's portrait of Monet

Relatively rare Monet still life, nature morte, as the French call it:

his Le Quartier de Viande; 1864, way before he or anybody else

was doing Impressionism (except maybe Turner, a generation

earlier)

Another Fantin-Latour group portrait I like: Un Atelier Aux
Batignolles, 1870; right at the birth of French Impressionism
featuring Manet (with the palette), Renoir, Monet and Emile Zola,
among others

Stand right up next to it and every minute the huge mechanism 
clanks and the hand moves half a foot...

Evidently I was in a sort of Fantin-Latour mood that day; here
his Coin de Table, 1872; Verlaine and Rimbaud the two left-most

Interior train station clock...works, too

Really bad hair day

Now we are in the Art Nouveau furniture section,
referenced above: Hector Guimard, whom we
adore, doors

I'd drink out of those...but only the really good stuff

Moving right along...Andre Devambez, Le Seul oiseau qui vole
au-dessus nuages, 1910; "the only bird that flies above the clouds";
clearly one of Bleriot's early monoplanes; the French didn't get
there first, but they've never been very far behind; witness Airbus

We'd missed a turn, but are now back in post-Impressionism:
an 1886 Van Gogh, perhaps before he found his voice, so to speak:
his La Guinguette a Montmartre le Billard en Bois

Changing style: Le Restaurant de la Sirene a Asnieres, 1887

La Salle de Danse a Arles, 1888

The Starry Night, 1888

Chaumes de Cordeville au Auvers sur Oise, 1890; among his last...

Done, and outside; along the top of the building are named the
various French cities served by the station, once one of Paris'
largest and most famous 

Strolling along the Seine to our next museum...

Marche Belleville; and The Original Mr. Potato Guru

I thought about combining this post with the preceding one, from the gourmet epicierie at Galeries Lafayette, and calling it "A Tale of Two Markets." But I didn't. The contrast is extreme, in any case. The Marche Belleville is way further out, technically in the 11th but stretching into the 19th (I think), a neighborhood with perhaps more emigres and refugees than native French. Accordingly, you won't find much foie gras or fine wine at Belleville, though halal is big, and there are many ethnic groceries and epiceries in addition to the Tuesday and Friday street market. (Alas, the Chinese grocery we so liked on previous visits no longer does those Peking ducks that used to hang in the window.) At Belleville you can have a genuine market experience, that is, the experience of a market reflecting its neighborhood. After the rather sparse Bastille market clientele a few weeks ago, it was almost good to again be pushed and shoved, elbowed, and run over by carts and baby carriages. It's a huge market, and nearly exotic, as one would expect. On this and previous visits we have not taken many pix; people here, some of them, don't like being photographed. We actually bought a few things, household and veggies and fruit. It was not our first visit to Belleville, nor, hopefully our last. 

But first: Many Metro stations in Paris have cultural displays,
usually focusing on something in the area...the Opera Garnier,
the Louvre, whatever; we happened to change lines at the
Parmentier station and thus ran into one of the more interesting
displays so far...

Antoine-Auguste Parmentier was an 18th century French pharmacist
and agronomist who agitated for adoption of the potato as an alternative
food source (if only Louis XVI and his ministers had listened
more carefully...); also presided over France's mandatory smallpox
vaccination program under Napoleon (morons of Idaho, are you
reading this?!)

"Let them eat potatoes!"

Did you know that properly fried frites require a special kind of
potato?

Intriguing recipes also part of the display

Unsurprisingly, the display was supported by, among
others, the ambassador from Peru, land of 3,000
(or was it 4,000?) potato varieties

Moving along and peering into a Belleville butcher's shop;
Monsieur Guillotine works here...

A very ethnic neighborhood...burqa dolls are, of
course, interdicted in France

Happy fish at the market

Part of the backside of the huge market

Galeries Lafayette

Galeries Lafayette on Boulevard Haussmann is one of our regular stops...not that we actually shop there, except for souvenirs, gadgets, and travel stuff...but for the architecture, the glorious rotunda, and the views from the terrace. This time, in addition to the above, we also visited the gourmet epicerie, which will now become our major food supply stop in Paris...fabulous selection of everything and not much more expensive than the Monoprix...and definitely superior to the Grande Epicerie across the river.

730€ plastic raincoat; hat, shoes, headphones, not included

The upper floor of of the gourmet epicerie is a series of star
chef boutiques; consistent with the design of the larger department
store

In the eastern Mediterranean market

Color-coded salts

Herbs and spices

Jambon master (Spanish ham)

Les fromages

Upper floor stars

Now in the downstairs supermarche, largest shrimp ever; we
explored for an hour, finally buying huge pacheco pasta for our
veal Amalfi dish...