Down to Nine Days

Time is winding down here, but we still find things to love about Paris.  This weekend they were having a small Christmas market on the two blocks of Rue de Alésia east of our apartment, which consisted of stalls of vendors selling mostly delicious things to eat.  We went to the market on Sunday, and by the time we traversed the two blocks, we were no longer hungry, having tasted several different kinds of bread, sausages, compotes, foie gras, cheeses, candies, and fruits.  We purchased among other things the most delicious cheese we've had since we've been here, a dry, crumbly, rich and deep white-ish cheese whose name escapes me, if in fact I ever knew it, and some hearty country-style brown bread, slightly sour, which made tremendous toast.  After lunch we went to the Musee du Quai Branley, a relatively new museum containing primitive "non-Western" artifacts from Oceania, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  You weren't supposed to take pictures there, but everyone else was, so I took just one, to show the type of things on display; this isn't the most interesting (that title would go to the artifacts from Oceania, which were incredibly bizarre, almost scary), but it does give a sense of the place:



Unfortunately, I came away really not liking this museum.  The collection was wonderful, but the space was awful -- dark and claustrophobic, the space would seem crowded even if it had no one in it due to the arrangement of the artifacts.  I also disliked the exterior of the building, a blocky, dark, red-rust colored modern monstrosity, totally out of synch with the surrounding neighborhood, centered in a garden that is self-consciously non-French, which is fronted on the Seine side by a strange high glass wall.  To me, just nothing about the place is appealing.

So, you see, there are some things in Paris I don't like.  In fact, to ameliorate the growing depression, I'm going to try to come up with "10 Things I Hate About Paris."  So far I only have two, but I'm pretty creative....

Finally, here's a picture of my son Will, on the Metro.  I love this picture.  It's so evocative of our time here.