Hanging out with Rodin

I was in year six at primary school.  We had an excursion to Canberra which impacted me in two ways.  It showed me that the Australian War Memorial is one of the most special places we have in this country and it introduced me to the work of Auguste Rodin.  (Then Shelley Conrick spilled boiling water on her foot and it all went down hill from there.)

The Sculpture Garden in the National Gallery of Australia has a cast of four of the six figures.  It is a striking work and over the years I have visited the gallery, especially after moving to Canberra, I have always spent a minute looking at it.

It's not just the story of the burghers of Calais, who were prepared to sacrifice themselves to save their townspeople during the seige of Calais in the Hundred Years War, but the amazing power of Rodin's work.  He does hands so beautifully, along with everything else.

Anyway, fast forward to Paris and a visit to the Musee Rodin was always on my must do list.  The museum is located in the Hotel Biron, a house where Rodin lived for a time before his death.  It is an old house, stuffed full of works by Rodin, with a few minor paintings thrown in that he owned (anyone heard of Munsch, Monet, Van Gogh or Renoir?) and a beautiful garden with bigger works in it.

You'll find some familiar friends here - the Thinker and Balzac are in the garden, along with some other very famous works.

Inside there are more of my favourites.

The Cathedral is bigger in real life than you would expect.

And then there is the Kiss.  It is a breathtaking piece and it almost feels like intruding to take pictures of it. (I managed though).

Isn't it beautiful?

Tearing yourself away from this, and the chance to get up close and personal with Vincent (and check out the Munsch)

it is time to head back outside, to where the burghers are waiting.  My apologies that this post is so picture heavy - there could have been more, but I had pity.

I love the dignity of this sculpture.

Look at the hands - aren't they wonderful?

I took pictures from every angle possible and then some.  And then I just sat and looked and was happy. I'll need to go to Calais now, to see them in their natural habitat.  But seeing them in Paris was incredible and I will be forever glad that I did.

Auguste, it was a pleasure spending time with you.

Art Through the Ages - my year 7 art history text book comes to life

Who would have thought that Paris would become an homage to Mrs Viola Winkler, the diminutive Austrian art teacher I had in year seven at high school?  But so it was.  From Notre Dame with flying butresses, vaulted ceiling and rose window, to the collection of Assyrian art at the Louvre, to the wonder that is the Rodin museum at Hotel Biron, 'Art' Paris was full of familiar sights and old friends.

It took a few days to get to my first gallery.  The Musee D'Orsay is an incredible building. While a large part of the impressionist collection was still off display, there were still too many wonderful paintings and artists to list here.  I loved eavesdropping on the various tour guides and picking up interesting little snippets about different paintings.  For example, the famous painting Van Gogh did of his bedroom in Arles is apparently an illustration of his friendship with Gaughin - two hooks on the wall, two pillows on the bed, two paintings.  Another explained the work of Van Gogh and the difference between Impressionists and Expressionists beautifully.  She described, while talking about the picture of the church that Impressionists painted what they saw, but Expressionists were the first to paint what they felt.  It's hard not to feel a bit emotional while standing in the room with the Van Gogh paintings.  Well, hard for me, anyway.  It was a bit of a relief to move on to some of my other old friends - Renoir, Sisley, Cezanne.  It's nice to know that the Musee D'Orsay will always be there for me to go back to.  And I love the rhino in the forecourt.

Then there was the Louvre.  Which is mindblowing and overwhelming unless you take it in small bites.  Obviously there are the big stars - Mona Lisa, Winged Victory and Venus de Milo.  You all know what Mona looks like, but here are the other two.

Then there are some familiar faces that pop out at you - Hello Senor Botticelli, nice to see your work here!

And then there are hundreds and hundreds of paintings, from everywhere.  All old, all incredible, all after a while, blurring into one.  How on earth do the curators choose what to display?

But just when you think you can't take another religous painting, another Madonna, another dark Flemish masterpiece, you stumble across something amazing.  While I was there, the Louvre had a display of Medieval and Renaissance illumination.  I couldn't take pictures, but google Willen Vrelant.  Dating from the 11th century, through to the 15th, this was some of the most exquisite work I had ever seen.  The level of fine detail was astonishing and I felt priveleged to be there and see it for myself.  You can't help but reflect a little on what we create these days.  In six hundred years will anyone stand and look at something we made and say 'what a privilege'?

Anyway, soul restored, I marched on.  Upstairs, around corners, past dour Flemish people, through Napoleon's incredible apartments. (Wow, liked red and gold and sparkly things much?)

Then downstairs, away from the crowds and there were the most wonderful treasures of all.  The Louvre has a collection of Assyrian art.  And in among the collection is one of the other things I remember so clearly from my Year Seven art history text book.

The Human Headed Winged Guardian Bull.  Greatly beloved by Mrs Winkler (you have to say it with an Austrian accent).  Right there, in the Louvre, right in front of me. Dating from about 700BC.  My excitement knew no bounds.

And there was this fellow, another friend from Art Through the Ages.

Nothing else mattered much after that.

(And Rodin deserves his own post...)

Food, glorious food (otherwise known as the raw and the cooked)

In preparation for my trip to Paris, I did revise some of my high school french.  Needless to say, it was mostly appropriate words to use in restaurants.  I do think that if you can speak food in another language you are making a good start.  Add in please and thank you and the tourist battle is half won.

Interestingly, Paris became a little bit about my flirtation with raw food.  Raw milk cheeses - because I could - and raw beef.  Carpaccio and steak tartare to be precise.  I've only ever dabbled in raw beef dishes before.  Nibbled bits from the plates of friends or sampled trimmings while preparing steak.  Enough to know I liked it.  Not enough to know whether when faced with a large helping of chopped raw meat if I could actually eat it all.  (For some reason, carpaccio is not as confronting as steak tartare.  Maybe it is to do with the meat being pounded thin and then hidden under a pile of nicely dressed salad leaves.  I didn't even think twice before ordering and eating carpaccio.)

So, when my friend Perry and I found ourselves in a restaurant in Montmartre that served steak tartare, it was time.  Perry is a raw meat connoisseur from childhood, so I am told.  I pretended to be.

Asparagus risotto took the edge off (helped by a very nice glass of champagne), and then it arrived.  Beautifully hand chopped, accompanied by some lovely salad and roasted potatoes.  Fortunately not dressed with raw egg yolk as is sometimes the case.  But quite a large serving.  I only flinched a little bit, and then dived in.

It was so good.  Washed down with a riesling from the Alsace, which was a great accompaniment.

I nearly ate it all.  But in Paris, the wise woman leaves room for dessert.

There were other meals that were wonderful for other reasons (location, food, flirtation...).  But this was the most memorable because it ended up being about the adventure, and pushing my own boundaries (and the great company, but that's another story).  It was Paris, on a plate.

  

Cut to the chase... the highlights

So many people asked me when I came back from Paris 'what was the highlight?'

Can an entire trip be one big highlight?  Probably not, so I have narrowed (ha!) it down to three.
1. Food
2. Art
3. Friends

This is the food post.  Some of the pics will be better than others - indoors in restaurants with no flash tends to turn out a bit grainy.

If you have read more than one or two entries on this blog, you will have noticed that food is a ruling passion.  Buying it, cooking it, eating it, talking about it...  For me, a big part of the trip to Paris was going to be about the food.

My grasp of the French language revolves around food, I was at my most comfortable speaking French in restaurants.  We ate some spectacular meals.  We also ate some average ones.  Some of the best food we had in Paris was the stuff we bought ourselves from the shops.  And oh, what shops they are.

Being a frequent shopper at the Canberra farmers market, I am used to the whole idea of markets, with loads of fresh produce laid out on tables in front of me, so while the food markets in Paris were wonderful, they weren't new.  What I loved the most was the shops.  From the two glorious streets of food shopping that are Rue Montorgueil and Rue Mouffetard (Rue Montergueil was two blocks from our apartment), to the afore mentioned grand epicerie at Galeries Lafayette, to the deli counter at my local Monoprix supermarket - I was in heaven.  A big part of it must be the way everything is displayed.  The French understand that a big part of food shopping is what you see as well as what you taste.

It was mushroom season.  Ceps, or as we know them here, sadly in dried form only, porcini.  Big, meaty, flavoursome mushrooms.  Throw them in a frying pan with some girolles and chanterelles and garlic and butter then pile onto a fresh baguette.  It's no wonder I didn't want to come home.

Then there was the cheese.  The raw milk cheeses that we just can't get here.  If you ever (assuming you are living in or visiting a country that doesn't have such stupid laws about milk) come across Perail de Cabasses do not hesitate.  It is a beautiful soft sheeps' milk cheese that I would happily eat every day for the rest of my life...  Fortunately the lady in the cheese shop spoke english, because my French was not up to a complex conversation about different types of cheese.  What else did I buy from there?  I can't remember, but it was good.  From somewhere else, a goats cheese wrapped in a chestnut leaf was another standout.

And honey.  The French love their honey and I did manage to buy honey from the lady at the honey stall in the St Eustache street market in French, as she spoke no english.  We talked about the different things they use it for - tea, coffee, sore throat, beauty treatment ('pour la visage' she said, patting her face).  And when I told her I had bought cheese, she also said that honey goes well with cheese.  And boy, was she right.  There is no finer breakfast that some soft goats or sheeps cheese on a fresh baguette, topped with a drizzle of honey.
 

OK, I will show mercy.  It is obvious at this point that the food post will be spread over two entries... Go and make a sandwich now.

A sunny Tuesday in Paris

Paris is a city for walking.  Most of it is flat, all of it is interesting.  While the metro is a fabulous system, and gets you from one side to another brilliantly, with great people watching thrown in, you lose the context of the city.  Coming up for air from a metro station always requires a few moments of re-orientation, turning the map in a few circles to work out which way is up, and then choosing a random direction to walk until the next cross street tells you where you really are.  Forty four years of being told to keep to the left is pretty firmly ingrained in my head.  I was fine crossing roads (only one near miss), but I constantly walked in people's way.

A pre breakfast stroll down to the Jardins de Tuileries and along the Seine... I picked up chestnuts that had fallen from the trees and heard birds chirping in their nests inside the lollipop shaped topiary trees.  It turns out my year seven french extends quite well to buying croissants in a boulangerie, without needing Philip Ledouxe to be present as well.

No trip to Paris is complete without some shopping in the great department stores.  The Galeries Lafayette and Printemps could eat your entire bank account and look around, smiling, for more.  It wasn't the fashion that tempted me, although walking among those racks of designer clothes that I had only ever read about was incredible.  It was, of course, the food sections.  The David Jones food hall multiplied by a million.  From the hand crafted sweets - pink sugar roses anyone? - to the seafood displays, cheese counters, breads, coffee, olives, 5kg jars of nutella...

And then the kitchen ware.  All the Le Creuset you could ask for (interestingly at much the same price as here, so that's a comfort), plus the quirky kitchen gadgets displayed with such great style.

A coffee and a Laduree macaron at the outdoor cafe on top of Printemps provided the view of Paris needed for some orientation.  I can report that the macaron was not nearly as fine as the ones from Dream Cuisine here in Canberra.

The glass dome in Galeries Lafayette is astonishing. Dating from 1912, it now shelters the cosmetics department.  I couldn't leave Paris without a new red lipstick now could I?

From the mid town shops we made our way to the Arc de Triomphe.  As so often happens, someone offered to take our picture... The next hour was spend in conversation with a New Zealander who was in France for flight simulator training, because he is one of three pilots who fly the mail around New Zealand.  In his spare time he grows truffles.  The conversation was diverse and free ranging and fairly spiritual at times - such is the magic of holiday acquaintances.

Up to the 16th for dinner at Terrasse Mirabeau, the restaurant recommended by Canberra based french chef Kim de Poorter (go buy his stuff at the farmer's markets, you won't regret it).  We saw the sun set over Paris from a bridge on the Seine and then ate an amazing meal.

Walked back along the river to the Eiffel Tower.  It sparkles and so did we.