Breaking In My Museum Pass--The Pompidou Centre

 Bon jour, mes amies,

No bike race today, so some serious touristing occurred.  I ventured out early on a chilly morning.  The plan was to go to the Tourist Information Center at the Hotel de Ville to obtain a Carte Musee et Monuments or museum pass.  One can obtain these valuable objects at the museums themselves, but I realized it would be far more efficient to stand in short line at the tourist office rather than waiting for the museum to open and then wait in a vast, slow moving line to buy the card.  Mine is for six days or rather as Madame explained to me 144 hours.  You can also get one for two and four days with the set number of hours.  I say this every time, but I'm going to reiterate it.  In major cities these cards are worth it.  Now I generally make them pay, but that's not the point.  The point is saving your precious vacation time.  With the Carte you enter right away bypassing the annoying lines of clueless tourists in front of the ticket counter.  And you can gaze pityingly on the long, snaking lines of the poor saps who don't have a ticket or pass and who are waiting and waiting even to get through the door.

On my way I went in to an open pharmacy because I'd forgotten to pack my nail clipper.  I obtained my first "souvenir" and my ragged nails will thank me.  I also strolled through the lovely garden at the Tour St. Jacques, and after I got my museum pass, I crossed the street to snoot around the Bazaar de Hotel de Ville fondly known as BHV.  It's a department store dedicated to home goods and do it yourself.  But they have a luxe makeup and perfume section, so I helped myself to something by Yves St. Laurent called Cartan or something like that, which was pleasant but nothing special.

I proceeded up to Beaubourg to the Pompidou Centre.  The neighborhood is interesting so I strolled around a bit before getting in the line dedicated to us savvy Carte holders.  Yep.  Once the museum opened we zipped right in.  You'll need to go through security in most museums and even some stores, but it's done efficiently.  Unless there's a chronological direction to the museum visit, I generally go to the top floor and work my way down.  A visit to the top floor of the Pompidou is a must in my opinion.  The views across Paris are spectacular!  Then one can proceed to the Modern Art.  I enjoyed the exhibits on offer.  Notable was a collection of artists who inspired the fashion of Yves St. Laurent, and included some of the actual dresses he designed.  I was also impressed with an exhibition of the works of the American Artist Shirley Jaffe--someone I had never heard of, but who did a lot of work in Europe in the Twentieth Century.  She worked with Abstraction or at least non representational.  I did not like everything because she experimented with many different styles, but a lot of it was beautiful.

The museum is very close to where I'm living, but I did not go straight home.  I walked over to Rue Montorgueil to investigate . . . the . . . food.  The scene was quite lively except the wine and cheese shops were not open.  They don't open until the late afternoon, but there is plenty of other things on offer plus a myriad of cafes and restaurants.  I think I'm going to be going there frequently.  I popped into a lovely shop that was dedicated to fishy sorts of apero and sandwich filling.  I was offered a sample of some sardine sort of something, which was good, but I came away with some tins of tuna, tomatoes, green olives and herbes de Provence.  It's supposed to be sandwich filling but I'm going to use it to dress some linguine.  I also obtained a bottle of rose which is fancier than the stuff I normally eat.  Tastings to follow.

I'm having something recognizable as an actual dinner rather than improvised apero.  I'm calling it linguine Provencal.  I have a plate of linguine brought from home and dressed with some of that canned tuna mixture.  It's pretty good, and easy to make and has some healthful elements to it.  The rose is very nice as well.  Just chilled.

A demain