May 24, 2011 Tue
Today we got up and headed out from our hotel and stopped at the local pharmacie where Chet got some type of anti-histamine for his episodic sneezing fits. The pharmacist said that the pollen season had come a full month early this year and I think we noticed because the last time we came here Chet had no allergy problems and oddly never does back in the US.

A short stop away then was Chet's favorite Viennoiserie, where we got a couple things and a sandwich for lunch later in the day. (At the corner of Rue de Rennes and Rue Mezières. And oddly, this place has no name. It has short lines out the door but no name. Chet asked Lynne to ask them what the name of the place was but she wouldn't, fearing an international incident!)

At any rate we took a couple trains that Liang deftly navigated through to get to the Jacquemart André museum, which was a private residence until after the "middle-upper class" residents passed on in 1912 and donated the mansion and extensive art collection to the Institut de France as a museum. The people had collected a very large collection of art works similar in vein to the Frick in New York. The odd thing was that in the US they called the owners rich industrialists but in France they were just middle-upper class, or haut bougeois. Lynne says the difference is that the people weren't nobility so they weren't considered to be true upper class despite however well off they were. (And just as an example they were buying entire walls of houses with frescoes by Tiepolo! The most spectacular example came from a villa in Venice, and took six months to successfully move to Paris and install on the wall above the grand staircase. An interesting observation in the thoughts of two cultures.)

Also present was a temporary exhibit of the Caillebotte brothers, one of whom was a painter and the other a photographer. Both the brothers did some of the same works but in their own medium. It was an interesting exhibit and well worth seeing. There is an iPhone app available under keyword Callebotte also for free we are told if you want to see what we saw.

Then we walked east on Bd Haussmann and stopped at some passages that had stores in them were early indoor malls with covered glass. They were cool but not as impressive as the big one we saw in Milano next to the Duomo church. And last we stopped at one of Chet's favorite places - the Librairie Gourmand, which is a two story store which has cookbooks only. He exercised restraint and left with only three books. Our next stop was an outside cafe that we stopped at because we were parched. And our last stop of the day was the Café du Metro for dinner. Chet revisited the Suprême de Volaille there, and was relieved to once again enjoy a great Parisian meal.

Interestingly also, the iPad has been really a huge help for us while traveling for anything from looking up museums, getting maps, googling things to writing up these comments. We can't say enough about how useful it's been. Plus we have magazines from our New Yorker subscription on it too to read offline while traveling too, although we've mostly been too busy for that!