Art supplies, lunch, and pastries

 I kept thinking about the art supply store. We don't have anything like this in our little city. Floors full of supplies, to repeat myself. Look, many airbrush sets! I haven't seen one of these in years.

 Color is the way to group items, yes? These are pieces of foam, felt (in 2 thicknesses) and paper. I can't remember what was on the bottom shelf. See my honey touching the item at the top?

 This is only a portion of the brushes available.

 These are some of the pastels. They're a bit out of focus as I moved so quickly from one fabulous thing to the next.

 Pencils! I want more colored pencils in my life. I may have to make one more trip to Rougier et Plé before we leave Paris.

 This was our Sunday lunch. I'd made some soup with potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic and some red lentils. We had cheese and, of course, a bottle of wine. Our friends gave us two bottles of some very good red wine, notice the date 1999! It was quite good. We're getting to really like GOOD wine.

Here's pastry that we got at Miss Manon yesterday, since it was open. Not many bakeries, or shops are open on Sunday. As we left, the line was very long, out the door, with customers. We'd made it just in time to beat the crowd. These were excellent pastries.  We have a few more bakeries to try out, like hundreds!!

Tuesday, the archives and Mail Art and food.

 The National Archives are located not too far from where we are. This afternoon, the courtyard was open and there was an exhibit installed along the arcade. In the middle was a photo booth, which caught Chuck's attention and drew us in. For 2€ I got a photo of myself as a "suspect."

 The exhibit was of identity cards and passports from 1917 until the 1960s. It was very interesting, surprisingly.

 A close up of one of the large posters along the arcade.

 I brought my 9B pencil with me and enjoyed making piece of Mail Art with it. The circles were made using an aquarelle pencil in green.

 No one knows, except Mona, why she is attracted to light houses. Who knew that the needlework catalog left in the storage room would come in so handy.

 Mona showed off her latest needlework creations. These are destined to me housewarming gifts, no doubt.

 Last night, I made salmon (that came from Scotland) and potatoes for dinner. I don't have an oven, or broiler, so I made the salmon in a frying pan. I sear that bottom then lower the heat and cover the pan. It works well.

On our walk back from the trip to the galleries, we stopped at the boulangerie recommended by someone, and got a pain au raisin and an abricot viennoise. We decided that we don't like this one as much as another bakery nearby. Not to say these were not delicious, and certainly better than we get back home, but we are getting to be very picky about our pastries!

Update of Thursday.

 Yesterday, after my French class, we did some errands, like laundrmat, eyeglass shop, BHV to see about printing digi prints, and stopped at a small boutique to say hello to the owner, whom we'd met a few years ago. She has a small boutique with ceramics and hand made jewelry and has this cute faced heater!

 Here are more of my tiny landscapes in progress. 2" x 3" (5.8cm-7.3cm appx) So far, I have 34 more to complete.

 When we were at Centre Pompidou the other day, I found a souvenir shop with inexpensive tourist postcard, 10 for 1,50€. I got a lot of Mona. I will go back there and get some more as I'm having such fun with them.

 The catalog for needle-point that I cut up is coming in very handy for giving Mona something to hold.

 On the way back from errands yesterday, we stopped at a bakery for a baguette and some pastry to have after dinner.

These were quite delicious. You can see that we shared them.

Desserts!

What came in these lovely packages? A tarte au fruites (check out all those berries!) Maccaroons, big ones! They were wrapped like gifts. The cheese cake and the brownie came in plain wrapping but oh mi oh mi were they ever delicious. The cheese cake was so heavy and yet fluffy. How do they do that? NOTE: I've been spelling "pain au raisin" like this "pain aux raisins" then thought that was wrong, but I saw it both ways, depending on the boulangerie where I bought them. Who cares how it's spelled as long as I get to eat it! Yay for desserts.

Juedi (thursday) evening

Last night, we went to the restaurant at the Mosquee de Paris with a couple we'd met at the Cite last fall. None of us had been to this place, though I'd heard about how good the food was from others. We walked over there, chatting the whole way, so that it seemed like a short distance. We had cous cous, which was excellent, and some sweet mint tea, and got to choose our dessert from this big tray of pastries. Hard to decide. We each chose a different one and shared. They were all good. We walked back by going all the way around the Jardin des Plantes. As we were passing the final length of fence, C said, "It smells like horses!" Ah, we were passing the menagerie area of the park. We pressed our faces to the bars of the fence and saw a pen with some dark shapes, that we couldn't identify. Animals? Holes in the ground? We looked very closely. Then our friend said, "It moved!" Oh my, it was a long neck attached to the shape, not a pipe sticking out of the ground. A long neck with a head attached. Then we could see that it was two ostriches (or in that family) lying on the ground with their heads up. One was turned a bit to look at us, maybe. It was such a surprise and a treat. We then crossed the street and continued our walk through the Plein Aire Sculpture garden along the Seine. There were lots of sculptures, some nice trees, and lots of young people enjoying themselves in groups, with food, bevereages, and a guitar. The tourist dinner boat passed by, stopping to show the passengers a beautifully lit up weeping willow tree. The Pont de Tournelle looked beautiful with nice lighting above and below. When we crossed over the Pont Marie towards the Cite, C pointed out the hundreds of people on roller blades going past on the Quai des Celestins. The sound was very interesting, a low level roar. What a night for all our senses: sights, tastes, smell and sound.

Los Angeles

I went to Los Angeles last week to help celebrate my mother's 95th birthday. What a trip!! (in many ways) Mom had three fetes, one evening after another, with different groups of family members. She loved it. On the first day I was there, we took mom to some health related appointments. After one, we stopped at a bakery for coffee, drawn to it by the wonderful aroma. They had a recession special: $2.50 for a big cup of coffee and any pastry. Here's what my sister and I chose. Mom ate her's so fast I didn't get a picture of it. The shop reminded me of patisseries in Paris. No kidding! Here are some of what they sold. The cookies were fun, especially the ones like Jackson Pollack paintings. If you're ever near Northridge, California, USA, check out Delicious Bakery.

The Musselman Institute & Tea House

Today, Agnese took us to the Musselman Institute, which is connected to the Paris Mosque. It was a fairly short walk over to it, but with the chilly weather it seemed to take longer. We went into the building and found ourselves outside in a beautiful courtyard, and then we passed through a corridor into another courtyard. It was beautiful with lots of tile work on the walls and the floor of the small courtyard. It must be really amazing in warmer weather as there are fountains and pools of water. As you enter the tea house, you see a case of mouth watering (okay, I had to make that cliche because it's true) pastries. We went from there into indoor seating area. Lots of copper tray tables, a waiter bringing glasses of tea to everyone. Chuck went out and chose and assortment of pastries for us. There were little birds in the room that came down to the tables to clear up the crumbs. Oh, yes, I discovered why I was extremely cold walking over. I'd forgotten to add my wool layer of clothing, I'd left the sweater lying on the bed. Brrrrr!

Vendredi (Friday) More images

Here's a assortment of things that I saw yesterday...the view of the back of St. Paul's church in the misty afternoon. A very large photo by Shirana Shahbazi, an Iranian photographer, who has a show at the Swiss Cultural Centre, (more of her photos on my Flickr) and some beautiful pastries and vegetables that Chuck photographed for me, while I was busy shopping. For those of you who have't tried the radish spread, the recipe is here.

Our last full day on holiday...

We grabbed our cups of coffee from the 24/7 coffee pots on the terrace level early this morning, and ascended to the pool terrace, where we saw this beautiful sky. We spent some time reading before going out to breakfast. We found the bakery that we'd gotten pastries from on our first day, and had breakfast, as well as more pastries. After that, we took a taxi to Plaza de las Americas (yes, amigos, I went to a mall willingly) to try to find Salsa music CDs. Chuck got three CDs at Borders and I got Book 1 of Harry Potter in Spanish, which was something I'd planned on. What a good way to increase my vocabulary. See the coquis hanging from the ceiling in the mall? It was a good place to be for a few hours, to escape the humidity. Our cab driver, Cristian, was very nice and arranged to pick us up at a specified time. It worked out great. We got back to the hotel, went back up to the pool area to enjoy the breeze, until time for the nightly wine and cheese reception.