Early Thursday wrapup
Today, I let Terri sleep in until 9am, because she did not sleep well last night. We made it down to the breakfast cellar before they closed up shop at 10. Breakfast was coffee, tea, juice, and a big basket of breads. It was very good bread, as was just about all the bread we've had, but it's time to get a little variation in our diets!
We left the hotel by about 10:30, and had a leisurely walk and window shop in the Marais, the district sort of near where we're staying. We crossed the Seine near Notre Dame into the Latin Quarter, and went to Shakespeare & Co. It's a storied English language bookshop. Actually, the current regime, dating from 1951, took the name of an older, storied English language bookshop, but it's still a very unique establishment; the staff actually are writers who also live in the shop. There are books crammed into every conceiveable nook of the place, and walking through it, you're also sort of walking through someone's bedroom(s).
[Terri] I'll chime in here... I thought Shakespeare and Co. was really charming. It's a bit cramped, so everyone is stumbling over each other, but in a really pleasant way. The shop cat, a gregarious black puss with a short attention span, jumped from spot to spot and followed the shopkeeper in and out. The stairs to the second floor were narrow and painted red. The whole upstairs is actually a lending library, and we saw residents up there sweeping up and leafing through books.[Terri end]
We were then very hungry, so we stopped at a nearby café. It's a heavily touristed district, and while it wasn't the greatest lunch place in the world, it was a much better option than most of the other places around. The sort of murky grey skies turned sunny while we were sitting there, so we ended up spending a fair chunk of time there having coffee and writing postcards.
[Terri] It was there that Ezra tried his first Croque Madame (a grilled ham and cheese sandwich with an egg on top] and I rediscovered limonade. [Terri end.]
After that, we walked back to the Marais and went to the Museé Européenne de Photographie. Some decent stuff, including an exhibition of Warhol's Red Books (cheap polaroids of famous people; according to Terri, who actually looked at their website beforehand, he said that his idea of a good photo is one that is in focus, of a famous person doing something un-famous. The photos were as advertised.) There was also some interesting stuff by an Italian guy whose name we can't remember. There was also a Soviet photographer whose work was mostly of the "look at the worker with his great big wrench" variety, but there were some interesting photos of casualties and tank battles in WWII, as well as lots of Communist bigwigs.
[Terri] Mainly, I was impressed by the Italian's work, and the Soviet photographer's shots of WWII. I've seen pictures from WWII before, but something about these shots felt more real and very sad. As I was saying to Ezra, the images were sad in a real way in that I didn't feel like the photographer has composed the photos to pull at my heartstrings with violins playing and a guy cueing up a grey day in the background. The photos were sad because they were what they were. In particular, I remember a shot of a soldier throwing a grenade and shots of the dead in the streets. There was a series of shots of a woman finding a dead loved one. Truly sad stuff. [Terri end]
Once we had had all the photography we could take in, we headed back to the hotel and freshened up to head over here, to Le Zenith.
We left the hotel by about 10:30, and had a leisurely walk and window shop in the Marais, the district sort of near where we're staying. We crossed the Seine near Notre Dame into the Latin Quarter, and went to Shakespeare & Co. It's a storied English language bookshop. Actually, the current regime, dating from 1951, took the name of an older, storied English language bookshop, but it's still a very unique establishment; the staff actually are writers who also live in the shop. There are books crammed into every conceiveable nook of the place, and walking through it, you're also sort of walking through someone's bedroom(s).
[Terri] I'll chime in here... I thought Shakespeare and Co. was really charming. It's a bit cramped, so everyone is stumbling over each other, but in a really pleasant way. The shop cat, a gregarious black puss with a short attention span, jumped from spot to spot and followed the shopkeeper in and out. The stairs to the second floor were narrow and painted red. The whole upstairs is actually a lending library, and we saw residents up there sweeping up and leafing through books.[Terri end]
We were then very hungry, so we stopped at a nearby café. It's a heavily touristed district, and while it wasn't the greatest lunch place in the world, it was a much better option than most of the other places around. The sort of murky grey skies turned sunny while we were sitting there, so we ended up spending a fair chunk of time there having coffee and writing postcards.
[Terri] It was there that Ezra tried his first Croque Madame (a grilled ham and cheese sandwich with an egg on top] and I rediscovered limonade. [Terri end.]
After that, we walked back to the Marais and went to the Museé Européenne de Photographie. Some decent stuff, including an exhibition of Warhol's Red Books (cheap polaroids of famous people; according to Terri, who actually looked at their website beforehand, he said that his idea of a good photo is one that is in focus, of a famous person doing something un-famous. The photos were as advertised.) There was also some interesting stuff by an Italian guy whose name we can't remember. There was also a Soviet photographer whose work was mostly of the "look at the worker with his great big wrench" variety, but there were some interesting photos of casualties and tank battles in WWII, as well as lots of Communist bigwigs.
[Terri] Mainly, I was impressed by the Italian's work, and the Soviet photographer's shots of WWII. I've seen pictures from WWII before, but something about these shots felt more real and very sad. As I was saying to Ezra, the images were sad in a real way in that I didn't feel like the photographer has composed the photos to pull at my heartstrings with violins playing and a guy cueing up a grey day in the background. The photos were sad because they were what they were. In particular, I remember a shot of a soldier throwing a grenade and shots of the dead in the streets. There was a series of shots of a woman finding a dead loved one. Truly sad stuff. [Terri end]
Once we had had all the photography we could take in, we headed back to the hotel and freshened up to head over here, to Le Zenith.
posted by Ezra | 6:37 PM
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