Tuesday, May 26: Jacquemart-Andre and l'Arc de Triomphe
Woke up to a very different Paris: drizzly rainy and cold! The good news there is I haven't had to really use the AC, so the dripping has stopped entirely. I find that makes a huge difference in my temperament about the room. It's actually quite functional and I don't need much more than a drip-free area to get clean in.
I figured I could hack the rain with an umbrella in hand, so I went on a neighborhood walk. Ok, ok, shopping trip. But I'm desperate to find cute comfy shoes! Everyone has flats here and I actually like some of them (unheard of for me) but I can't find any that fit. I'm between sizes and they dont' do half sizes, so I'm gonna have to stick to open toed shoes here...
Midafternoon (after re-organizing and planning out my week to not miss the must-sees) I headed towards the Jacquemart-Andre Museum. It’s the old mansion of an aristocratic couple from late 1800s/early 1900s. Without children to dote on, the couple spent their lives and their wealth collecting art as amateurs and furnishing this grandiose palace of a home in the middle of Paris. It was a very cool stop and not just because of the obvious luxury (pics); for example, the stairwell was built by the runner up for designer of the Charles Garnier fantasy that is l’Opera (one of my fave monuments) and he certainly had the last word here (pic).
But it was a cool story, too: two very different people (politically and with different motivations from different walks of life) with a shared love for art, particularly Italian. The Madame, Nelie Jacquemart-Andre, honored Monsieur Andre’s final wish that the house and art be bequeathed to state art society so that it may be “preserved as their vision of what two amateur collectors and art-lovers gathered over a lifetime.” Very neat.
I actually made friends with one of the gentleman running security (I swear I have a neon-clear sign on me that says “talk to me, I’m nice and sociable!”). He mentioned that my French was good, or at least better than his English, and we proceeded to have a pretty robust conversation in French about things like travel destinations in the States/Europe, his jobs and 4 week sabbaticals. It was a good exercise in using my French (as he is among the few people that doesn’t follow along much in English and didn’t try to talk to me in it). But it made me sweat a little, trying to conjugate words in present subjunctive: stuff real French people don’t use. Yeesh.
I closed up that museum and scurried down Blvd Haussman to l’Etoile to see the Arc de Triomphe in the sunlight (my other pics were cloudy). They were having a sort of dedication? Not sure what Tuesday, May 26th honors in France, but got a few neat pics in this very appropriate setting for a military dedication. Bought my ticket to go up the 250+ stairs for the panoramic view of the city. (pics) The gentleman at the window asked me if my ring held a “potion” – I laughed and said it did sort of look malevolent, but no. (see the pic of my ring in the set from Route des Vins).
In the category of random smiles: in the metro on the way back, I stood next to a gentleman in a business suit, a “grown up” person of maybe 35?, playing his handheld PS3 to pass the time on the subway.
I got to have dinner again with one of my new friends, Oliver, whom I met at the front desk of the MIJE hostels during my first stay and we had quite the 4 course meal again, practically closing the place down speaking in French-English (usually both within the same sentence).
Pics of Day 2 of Paris Round II on Flickr.
I figured I could hack the rain with an umbrella in hand, so I went on a neighborhood walk. Ok, ok, shopping trip. But I'm desperate to find cute comfy shoes! Everyone has flats here and I actually like some of them (unheard of for me) but I can't find any that fit. I'm between sizes and they dont' do half sizes, so I'm gonna have to stick to open toed shoes here...
Midafternoon (after re-organizing and planning out my week to not miss the must-sees) I headed towards the Jacquemart-Andre Museum. It’s the old mansion of an aristocratic couple from late 1800s/early 1900s. Without children to dote on, the couple spent their lives and their wealth collecting art as amateurs and furnishing this grandiose palace of a home in the middle of Paris. It was a very cool stop and not just because of the obvious luxury (pics); for example, the stairwell was built by the runner up for designer of the Charles Garnier fantasy that is l’Opera (one of my fave monuments) and he certainly had the last word here (pic).
But it was a cool story, too: two very different people (politically and with different motivations from different walks of life) with a shared love for art, particularly Italian. The Madame, Nelie Jacquemart-Andre, honored Monsieur Andre’s final wish that the house and art be bequeathed to state art society so that it may be “preserved as their vision of what two amateur collectors and art-lovers gathered over a lifetime.” Very neat.
I actually made friends with one of the gentleman running security (I swear I have a neon-clear sign on me that says “talk to me, I’m nice and sociable!”). He mentioned that my French was good, or at least better than his English, and we proceeded to have a pretty robust conversation in French about things like travel destinations in the States/Europe, his jobs and 4 week sabbaticals. It was a good exercise in using my French (as he is among the few people that doesn’t follow along much in English and didn’t try to talk to me in it). But it made me sweat a little, trying to conjugate words in present subjunctive: stuff real French people don’t use. Yeesh.
I closed up that museum and scurried down Blvd Haussman to l’Etoile to see the Arc de Triomphe in the sunlight (my other pics were cloudy). They were having a sort of dedication? Not sure what Tuesday, May 26th honors in France, but got a few neat pics in this very appropriate setting for a military dedication. Bought my ticket to go up the 250+ stairs for the panoramic view of the city. (pics) The gentleman at the window asked me if my ring held a “potion” – I laughed and said it did sort of look malevolent, but no. (see the pic of my ring in the set from Route des Vins).
In the category of random smiles: in the metro on the way back, I stood next to a gentleman in a business suit, a “grown up” person of maybe 35?, playing his handheld PS3 to pass the time on the subway.
I got to have dinner again with one of my new friends, Oliver, whom I met at the front desk of the MIJE hostels during my first stay and we had quite the 4 course meal again, practically closing the place down speaking in French-English (usually both within the same sentence).
Pics of Day 2 of Paris Round II on Flickr.
posted by Jess at 10:30 AM
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