Paris – Day 4 can be found here.
Planning a trip can be result in some strange artifacts. Sometimes you have to travel 8 hours in a single day. Sometimes you only get to spend a single night in a particularly nice destination. And sometimes you find yourself going on two tours in a single day, then have four days until your next tour.
That’s the situation that we find ourselves in now – both the Louvre and the pastry tour would have been crazy over the weekend, so they ended up happening on Friday. We now have no set tours – apart from dinner at the Eiffel tower – until we go to Versailles on Wednesday.
At this point, it’s a very welcome change of pace.
We started our day sometime after 8 am with a leisurely breakfast, followed by a trip to the local boulangerie – where we had the chance to put our newfound knowledge into action.
The day dawns on our beautiful piece of Paris
Our son ordered two baguette traditionelle as well as some cookies and an éclair. It was too far to go to any of the bakeries we’d already visited, but the line to this one was out the door so we figured it would be pretty good. We figured correctly.
We also picked up another round of groceries and soon returned home. We then had our first round of Dungeons & Dragons since we landed in Paris. The kids are making some real progress on Lost Mines of Phandalan, and it makes me wonder if we might finish it before our trip draws to a close.
At this point, we made lunch – baguette sandwiches with ham, mustard, and soft cheeses. Absolutely delicious.
The weather was looking nice, so we then decided to visit the Rodin museum:
Best known for The Thinker, Rodin is generally considered to be the founder of modern sculpture. Rather than simply producing realistic portrayals of individuals, he imbued his work with powerful emotion – to the point where his sculptures became almost abstract representations of his subjects.
Rodin started as an apprentice at the age of 17, but he was in his 40s before he gained recognition for his work.
After our visit to the Louvre, it was fascinating to see the continued evolution of sculpture – from only sculpting the gods (Greek) to realistic sculptures of people (Roman) and moving on to abstract representations of people (Rodin).
Rodin’s sculpture of the six burghers poised to surrender Calais to the English is particularly moving
Rodin was also a contemporary of Monet and collected the works of Van Gogh – so it makes sense that the abstract elements of Impressionism could be found in his sculpture.
This cross-pollination worked in other directions too – including a painting of The Thinker by Edvard Munsch, who also painted The Scream.
One of the most fascinating elements of the Rodin museum is the way in which they include all of the many, many different versions of his artwork. One example is these two different statues of Victor Hugo.
The initial version is much more emotional – and a lot more naked
It helps to show that even great masters struggled with their work, and needed to plan – and make multiple versions – while creating their art.
Rodin’s artistic process was further illustrated by the wide range of heads and busts included at the museum – including those that never made their way into the final work
There was also a fascinating video about how bronze sculptures are made. I couldn’t find the exact video, but the British Museum has another that outlines the process: Bronze casting process I A modern take on Rodin’s work (youtube.com).
After that, we walked back home and enjoyed a quiet afternoon. But perhaps a bit too quiet.
Despite it being our first real day of downtime, we were all getting a bit antsy by the time we left for dinner – so we’re going to continue to work on finding a better balance between tours and downtime.
After two dinners that emphasized convenience over culinary skill, we went out for dinner at Petit Cler – one of the restaurants recommended by our host.
Le Petit Cler is located on Rue Cler, a lovely pedestrian-focused street that has a wide range of restaurants, cafes, bakeries, sweet shops, market selling fresh produce, and much more.
The kids and I each had the steak frites:
While my wife had the duck confit:
For dessert, the kids had the profiteroles:
My wife had the tart tatin:
And I had the rhum baba:
For the rhum baba, the restaurant brought out a big bottle of rhum* and told me I could douse it myself.
“Are you sure you want to trust me with that?” I asked.
That proved prophetic, as I then managed to splash the rhum over the plate and down onto my slacks. Ah, well… we live and learn.
We then headed back to our apartment and started to ready ourselves to turn in for the night.
But a quick check of the forecast reveals another problem – the challenge of dealing with the cursed Rain Day.
* Rhum (aka agricole) is made with sugar cane, while rum – no h – is made with molasses. The former has a light, sweet, slightly grassy flavour. Most rhum is made in Martinique, but occasionally examples can be found from elsewhere – like St. Maarten. It’s similar to Guaro, which is made in Costa Rica.
Continue reading Paris – Day 6.