The Road Goes Ever On

Saturday, October 2, 2021

Julien, Galeries, And The Village Joue Club

Impressed by our experience at the Bouillon Racine, I undertook a little research and found another bouillon, Julien, just three blocks up from our apartment on the Rue Saint-Denis. We combined lunch there with another visit to the Galeries Lafayette and from there to the Jouet Club Village.

Other side of the Porte Saint-Denis

Julien...Belle Epoche decor, furniture, tile floor, the works

My bream ad zucchini pancake

Her steak and potatoes

Galeries Lafayette again...OK, it's not Sainte-Chapelle or the
Palau de Musica Catalana...but it's also not something you just
pass by...

Galeries Lafayette (incredibly) did not have what
we were looking for, but helpfully referred us to
the nearby JoueClub, a toy department store located
in a beautiful arcade...different toy ages and genres
in different shops

Thus

The usual department store decor

Acting childishly

Clignancourt Markets

Like Gaul, the Clignancourt cluster of markets may be divided into three parts: the funky/weird/ interesting, the over-priced antiques and collectibles (mostly in small shoppes), and the crap under tents and awnings that you can see in any market in the less affluent areas. We visited Clignancourt in 2014, I think, although I can find no blog posts on it. Anyhow, we visited again, enduring a long bus ride out and back, on Sunday, September 26.

We focused on the interesting/goofy stuff

Largest pipe ever

You'd be the toast of the town if you had a flying saucer for a
lawn ornament; or maybe you'd just be toast

Antique gas pump store

In the biggest/best vintage clothing store ever, so far

Worst Academy Award-winning movie ever;
and in English too

Fixer uppers

Crystal, almost life-sized

Now entering the swankier precincts

My patience for all the Louis XXIII and 5th Empire Strikes Back
furniture and such is pretty limited; but Vicki says it was really
pretty good, varied, better than what we saw in London; but she
doesn't take many pix

My one photo from the crap precinct: for decades I
have been predicting that leisure suits will be back;
here, we are getting pretty close...

Friday, October 1, 2021

Musee du Louvre, 1

So we have been there before...

and those are just the post-retirement visits I could find. The Louvre has a decent online presence and of course there's always Google Art and Wikipedia, and more, and thus individual pix of paintings and sculptures and such and virtual tours certainly are readily available. What I have hoped to present, mostly, is stuff that is not at those sites, stuff you would not ordinarily see, and stuff that is amusing or at least personally interesting to us.

We delayed visiting the Louvre this far into our 2021 September/October campaign in Paris in part because we were museumed-out after London and in part because we wanted to figure out the most reasonable approach to our usual multi-day visits to the Louvre. It's17€ p/p per day, and, at our present age and stamina, it will take several days. So we concluded it best for one of us to buy a Friends of the Louve membership (unlimited visits, additional perks, good for a year), and for the other to go as a guest on Saturdays. Vicki's interests in the Louvre are wider and deeper than mine, so she is now a Friend of the Louvre. Thus:

After the year is over I will make the membership card into a fridge magnet. The ultimate honor.

All that said and explained, I proceed now to a few pix from our September 25th visit.

Rubens' sister-in-law, Susanna Lunden, whom
we last saw in the National Gallery of Art, wearing a
(non-straw) hat; see also Elizabeth Le Brun's
self-portrait; I'm not sure how we got started off with
Rubens...possibly the Great Courses video we're
watching; but there you go

A typically happy Franz Hals sitter, a young woman,
known as the Gypsy Girl; probably a prostitute

Rembrandt side of ox

Seriously impressive Rembrandt Bathsheba

Gerard Dou, Better Hold That One up to the Light, 1663

Extremely teenie-weenie Vermeer Lacemaker,
1669; the Louvre also has the Astronomer, which
I am sure I posted sometime previously

Steen's Bad Company; we love Steen's moralizing-lite; just learned
he was deaf and mute...yet so talented, and perceptive

Attempted and unsuccessful pano of the Marie de Medici hall; not even half the room;
a dozen or so enormous Team Rubens paintings, glorifying/legitimizing her roles as
queen and then regent of France; at her request and direction; in reverse chronological
order, sorry, and only a few

Apotheosis of her husband, Henry IV (jousting accident, as I
recall)

Coronation

Birth of her son, Louis XIII

Arriving in France to marry Henry

Education of the future queen

The Louvre has one (1) Turner; and no (0; nada) Valesquez's;
some museum...

An early Mr. Fruity Butt Pants (Michaelangelo de Merisi, aka
Caravaggio), the Fortune Teller

This space reserved for a Velasquez, if they ever get one

The mob in line to see Mr. Smokey's Special Lady Friend

We saw a great deal of Italian, northern, and Spanish paintings (my camera was mis-set, so I'll have to go back for several of the Spanish), had a nice 1/2 poulet roti et frites lunch at the restaurant, finally left after four hours or so, but knowing we could come back.