Happy Third Anniversary to Katharine and George! 🙂
Gretchen headed for the airport at 8:30 and Mark needed one more serious morning of catching up on sleep so I worked on the VRBO site for the Estes Park house, processed photos and wrote a few notes for the blog.
At about 12:30 we pulled a few things out of the fridge and had a little bite to tide us over (the fennel and oranges are wonderful after sitting for a couple of days, and of course goat cheese in its various forms is yummy any time…). Mark got online and ordered me a Velib bike and we walked down and hopped on.
We headed in the direction of the Jacquemart Andre museum, which took us south across Pont Neuf, east along the Tuileries, north through Place Vendome (the column is being restored, along with a couple building facades), toward the Opera, then left on Haussman where we found a bike stand to drop off our bikes. We walked the remaining blocks to 158.
The Musee Jacquemart Andre is a mansion that was built in 1836 to house the banker’s considerable art collection. His wife was a painter herself who had a special love of the art of Renaissance Italy, and they made frequent visits to Florence and surrounding areas to acquire some amazing pieces. The mansion and art collection were bequeathed to the Institute of France on the couple’s death. It has an exhibition space and the current one is on Perugino and Raphael. The installation is in maybe 7 rooms, and it was wonderful! I love Raphael’s art but I didn’t realize that he was a student of Perugino. I also didn’t realize that he and Michelangelo and Leonardo DaVinci were contemporaries who were all living around the time that Columbus made his trip toward across the Atlantic in 1492. Must brush up on some history…
We found another Velib bike stand and rode toward Maison du Miel – House of Honey. (It took a bit of riding around the neighborhood to find a spot to drop the bikes. That part can be interesting and a bit of an adventure.) Love that place. Wall to wall honey of all flavors. We tried several and bought a couple (lavender and thyme). There were a couple of shoe shops in the vicinity so we had a look and Mark found some nice ones. We found another Velib  stand and rode back toward home, this time down Rue Honore (beautiful shops here!) then turning south in front of the Louvre at the beginning of the Tuileries, across the Seine, down Rue de l’Universite and back home. Mark went back out riding for about another hour while I got a shower and some down time.
Several years ago we met a very fun Parisian couple about our age, Jean Claude and Olivia. She is actually Italian come to think of it. This was well before Gretchen and Luigi bought the apartment here and now it turns out they live a few blocks away. They had exchanged homes many years ago with our dear high school friend, Terri, who lives in Los Angeles. We have had dinner together a few times and on another occasion they joined us for a few days in Provence and we’ve come to really enjoy them. All that to say we had made plans to have dinner together and we ended up at a little neighborhood spot and had a delightful time together. It’s really, really nice to have friends to reconnect with here, and now they have become friends with Gretchen and Luigi as well.
Hither, Yon and Skies 