Day 5:  Paris

Quote of the Day: Which did you like better?

Weather: Humid and growing warmer during the day

The only pic of lunch

Breakfast of leftover pastries and bread, with decaf. Took a walk to the large farmer’s market about a ½ mile away and restocked on fruit, pate, and cheese. Back to rest up before our 3.5+ hour meal at Arpege, a 3* restaurant. Alain Brassard has been the chef since 1986 and now includes an extensive number of vegetarian dishes.

We take the Metro and arrive at 12:30, leave around 4pm. We share two menus: the “surprise” menu, mostly vegetarian, and the all-vegetarian menu. Partway through the meal the staff has figured out we are sharing and that neither of us are pure vegetarians and so a few more non-veggie items show up. They are definitely paying attention. THB did not keep track of the courses: too many, no pics, and each course was excellent. For wine, instead of a pairing or two, the sommelier suggested he bring us a glass of wine and depending on where we were in the menus he would adjust to another wine. That meant we ended up with two glasses of excellent white wine each (first a German wine, then a French Burgundy), both extremely well priced. Total for two: $600. Best meal we have had in a long, long time, a very nice anniversary tour treat!

there's a faint image of the gallery owner, Celine (sp?) behind the glass

Decide to walk back, there is a ceramics gallery, Lefebvre et Fils, and an art jewelry gallery, Mazlo, pretty much in a direct line between Arpege and the apartment. It’s warm and humid, hard to notice at first since we are still basking in the glow of a great meal.

Nothing of note at the ceramics gallery. On the other hand, Mazlo has a few fascinating pieces. Several by Mariko Kusomoto; we have two of her exquisite and detailed metal “boxes.” She’s now working in a much more delicate ephemeral style with fabrics (much easier on her physically than working with metal).

Broach

And, several necklaces by Sam Tho Duong. Triple THB bonus points if you can identify what these necklaces are made of:

And, THB's fave in the gallery, photos by Gisbert Stach from the Golden Toast series:

THB doesn’t think he can complete the walk, so we take an Uber ride in heavy traffic. Expensive and maybe life-saving.

THB takes a cold shower and MB and DB come over for our last get together, they leave for the Dordogne tomorrow morning. Maybe! There is a scheduled strike of the Metro, buses, and local trains tomorrow. They have scheduled a taxi, and are only about 2 kilometers from the train station. We’ve scheduled a visit to the Pompidou tomorrow, easy walking distance from the apartment to the museum.

Running on Friday? Is THB running on Friday?

Car gridlock manana?

Book Review: Why Religion? An auto-biography by Elaine Pagels, author of the Gnostic Gospels. Mostly dealing with the grief and mourning from the death of her first child and then her husband (sound familiar?) which is well-told, and not so good when discussing religion and the early texts. Neutral