Day 25 Paris and Musee dOrsay

Some coincidences are thoroughly unbelievable! After searching out a restaurant to go to, thinking through and considering various options we ended up at Gaspard Du Nuit in Marais. Impressed with it we wrote to Britt on What’s App only to find that it was one of hers and Wil’s favourites and that both Perry and Ginny have been to it too. Now that really is weird. We liked it so much that at the end of the night we cancelled the booking for Le Grand Colbert so we could go back to Gaspard a second time and try other things on the menu. Gaspard was a winner immediately. It looked like the authentic French restaurant that a visitor has in their mind’s eye when they visit beautiful Paris. It was small, welcoming and familial. We were welcomed personally and warmly. The day’s specials were explained with excitement. We began with toasts of bread heaped with a beetroot mixture. It filled our mouths with flavor. Then we shared a sliver of terrine, …heavenly. Only fresh produce from chosen suppliers was ever on the menu and the fisherman from Brittany had caught wild sole so that was featured. John had that with nuggets of boiled potato and I wanted to try the fillet of beef with pepper sauce to erase the memory of that horrible one I had in the awful back street restaurant in Aix. Quite frankly the Gaspard beef was the best steak I’d ever had. It was served simply with diced, roasted potatoes, crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside. Johnny had a biscuit base heaped with towers of chocolate and I had the poached pear with chocolate and ice cream. The wine, the food, the service .. all was wonderful. The owner discreetly moved from table to table checking that all was to our satisfaction and with just enough conversation to make the diners feel like guests. The restaurant was clearly a labor of love. I loved sitting in bed, writing this diary, the balcony doors flung open to another cloudless, sunny Paris autumn day with a tingle of cold in the air, some distant church bells tolling 9 o'clock' and the conversation from the cafe across the street lifting up to us. But this is not a holiday for loafing around and i have to get up. WE WILL GET TO THE MUSEE DÓRSAY TODAY. The day began with a small sleep in then a brisk walk to the nearby St Paul metro station. We got off at the Tuilleries and headed across the park to the café in the gardens for breakfast. Along the way we saw a very healthy goat had been tethered by a chain. Its job was to crop the grass in the grass canals that ringed the grass verges in front of the Louvre. Breakfast was coffee (what else?) and crepes with strawberry jam. Along the way to the Musee DÓrsay we collected some of the beautiful chestnut kernels that had fallen overnight. They had such a beautiful surface that we stopped to photograph them. There were lines at the gallery but as seasoned campaigners we didn’t allow that to bother us. Ok, if you don’t like name dropping, now is the time to leave the blog. We saw the work of every artist that I pretended to know so much about when I sat my HSC Art exam. I got an A+ but so much knowledge had evaporated in the intervening 44 years. We saw the work of Corot, Coubert, Reousseau, Rodin, Van Gogh, Denis, Cezanne, Bonnard, Signac, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Gaugin, Delacroix, Seurat, Degas, Daumier, and MORE. I’m not talking one or two minor pieces, I’m talking room after room of each artist’s best and most recognized work. We were lucky enough to arrive in time to see the Splendour and Misery exhibition, which was a comprehensive look at the artists and photographers that had taken French prostitution as their subject. You can imagine how many Manet's Toulouse-Lautrecs, Munch's and Picassos were there. Wrestling my political correctness aside and trying to forget what these images were also saying about human trafficking, power and gender imbalances was a struggle, but there was no denying the power of the art. We spent hours in the gallery; longer in fact than we have ever spent in the presence of art, but it was so worth it. When we emerged at 3pm, it was to a blazingly sunny parisienne day. We took the side streets back to the hotel, through an area filled with shops selling art and antiquities. We even found a shop specializing in selling collectable clothing by the greatest French clothes designers. This area was next to the University of Paris and as we passed the Medicine faculty were a little shocked to see so many students outside, smoking on the footpath. We then wound our way up Boulevard Saint Michelle and the Boulevard St Germaine where the well off and suntanned were having their afternoon coffees while their chauffeurs minded their sparkling black limos in the side streets. I would not have been surprised to see Patsy and Edina hurtling round the corner in their rolls. We passed by the Les Duex Magots and as you can imagine, there was not a seat free in the house. Les Deux Magots was in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area of Paris and in the past was a meeting place for literary and intellectual stars. What we saw was a lot of posing and resting. God knows how the well off and suntanned keep so incredibly thin with all the eating, drinking and lounging that they do. Then we wound our way back to the hotel for a rest, catching sight of yet another couple and their professional photographer taking the mandatory romantic street shots of the hopeful couple before their wedding day. I lay on the bed, beer in hand, computer on my lap, watching the setting sun light up the building opposite and tempt the residents out onto their balconies. John lay on the bed giggling hysterically at the stuff on Facebook. The only thing I could think was that “Life is Good”. Dinner on this last night of this in Paris was at Gaspard du Nuit. We shared the snail entree and then we both had the duck fillet with potato mash and gravy. For dessert Johnny has the creme brulee and I had the irish coffee. The meal was delicious and the people watching was exceptional. There was a table of three that were having a very long winey dinner. One older guy was getting increasingly amorous while the younger man was getting more and more drunk. The woman fended off the older guy and developed a strong interest in her phone (as a distraction we thought. We would have loved to see where (and how) they all ended up. We took a last walk around Notra Dame before heading back to the hotel. Early rise tomorrow as we pack and uber to the airport for our flight on to Singapore and then Melbourne. We should arrive to 25 and 28 degrees on Saturday. Go Melbourne! Catch you next time. Love, Lily