I slept until seven, relatively late; after a relatively relaxed rising, we all walked down to Le Grenier a Pain for viennoisserie, then back up to Place d'Italie to take line 7 to Palais Royal. Z was upset as we walked into the courtyard of the Louvre. "This isn't Monet's garden," she wailed, but she perked up again as we walked through the Tuileries, still almost as austere and uninviting as on my first visit in 82, though with more free seats (K and I reminisced about rented seats and kids sailing boats in fountains).
At the west end, the obelisk in Place de la Concorde (not to mention the vista up the Champs-Elysees to the Arc du Triomphe) was obscured by a large temporary "gate" in Moorish geometric style set up to advertise the Moroccan exhibit at one of the nearby huge Palais exhibition halls.
Up at the Orangerie, there was a long line of people waiting to get in without reservations (they seemed to be permitting a maximum of 500 people, topping up when people left early or didn't show), and a very short line consisting of people trying to argue their way in with the comprehensive 3-day museum cards. We brushed past them, fifteen minutes early for our 11:00 reservation, checked our bags, and were in.
The Monet "Nympheas" exhibition, a two month break from major renovations that will close the museum for a couple of years, was arranged both chronologically and thematically, from early works (1899, shortly after the garden was constructed at Giverny) to later ones (1920's). As with all "blockbuster" exhibitions, the rooms were crowded in waves, people holding audioguides to their ears, and if one was willing to work back and forth and not see things in strict linear order, one could often have unobstructed long-range views of paintings (essential here for large-scale works that dissolve into thick blobs of paint close up).
Z and A recognized the Japanese bridge in the first room, all six versions of it. Z was a little hot and thirsty at first, but I got her talking about Linnea in Monet's Garden, a children's book on the subject that she adores. The paintings had come from all over -- Boston, LA, New York, the National Galleries in London. One room would have many versions of the same scene, in different lights, or at different stages of flowering.
At the end of the first floor, we reached a section with a brief video loop and some old photos, just in time to perk the kids' interest. Then down the stairs to the eight great canvases in two oval rooms, oddly less crowded than when the Orangerie was in regular operation. Z lay on my lap and looked at them sideways. "There aren't many kids here," she observed, and she was right; even though children were free, there were fewer than one finds in most art museums. "Well, perhaps kids don't like looking at this many paintings all on the same theme," I said. "I do!" she said brightly.
A few other great canvases and the exhibit was over. We walked back through the exhibition, asking the kids to show us their favourites in each room. A couple of postcards for their album and we were out, about noon.
Around the edge of place de la Concorde, whose centre was cluttered with renovation scaffolding and reviewing stands where the bigwigs would stand for the Bastille Day parade. Up Rue Royale, narrowed by construction, to the huge and overblown Madeleine (we asked the kids what it was, and they guessed a museum). Here we found the metro stop for the new Meteor line, number 14.
We descended beneath the older platform to a brand new and stylish stop, and when the train came, it was spanking-new, with huge windows, plenty of standing space, everything clean. Subsequent stations had glass all along the edge of each platform, fitted with doors that lined up exactly with train doors so that no one could be pushed or fall in (and, more practically, so that people could know where to line up and enter in an orderly fashion). The trains were very fast and almost empty, and stops were spaced quite far apart (Chatelet and Gare de Lyon were adjacent). Though the line only ran from Madeleine to the new Bibliotheque on the Seine in the 13e, it was clearly designed to be some hybrid of RER commuter line and metro.
We got off at Cour St. Emilion, briefly looked at the "Bercy Village" complex nearby which looked like old warehouses renovated for light commercial use, and then across Rue Francois Truffaut (!) to the new park. Of course, the kids spotted, and spent time in, a playground. Arching footbridges led high over rue de Dijon into the other side of park, where we found a rectangular reflecting pool, and could see an orangerie further up on the left side, but we left the park and walked up to place Lechambeaudie for our lunch reservation at L'Oulette.
It was fancier and somewhat more expensive than we had thought: a 165F menu was too restrictive, and the more attractive 250F menu included wine (N and K typically drank very modest amounts) and for some reason the whole table had to order it. We decided to go a la carte (starters 65F, mains about 140F). We ordered one escabeche de calamars to share as a starter -- thin strips of baby squid sauteed and then finished in a complex, thin sauce containing, of all things, curry powder. Once I forgot my aversion to the stuff, it was pretty tasty.
The kids split a confit de canard grillee with a stunning side dish of potato and bacon cake; K had braised oxtail in a sweet, intense reduction, stuffed into lightly-cooked tomato with sauteed foie gras; N had a generous aioli of poached fish and shellfish with deep yellow garlic mayonnaise; I had filet de rascasse, fondue d'artichauts, and tiny green beans. The portions were generous and all of it was fabulous; tastes and side plates kept passing around and across the table. We had a lovely half-bottle of Jurancon sec, a wine I'd been reading about for years, to accompany. Water and wine were kept on a remote side table and refreshed by the waiter, who kept a suitably haughty demeanour, though the patronne came by and tried to chat up the kids.
Desserts were 55F and we thought we could do better elsewhere, but the kids insisted, and they were right. N and K each ordered pain d'epice "perdu" (cut into small strips and cooked like what we call "French toast") with cinnamon ice cream (the kids had a great time nibbling on the cinnamon-stick garnish, which finally cracked through our server's reserve), and A asked for the millefeuille aux abricots caramelises, which was fabulous.
From about half-full, apparently of businessmen, the restaurant went to nearly empty by the time we left. We walked back down to the park and the kids had some playground time again. Then a brief visit to another world, over the pont de Tolbiac to the huge hulking Bibliotheque Nationale Francois Mitterand.
The four L-shaped towers of glass, with hastily-added wooden louvres inside to keep the light off the books, looked curiously unmonumental. The steep steps up the sides were an indication of things to come; an uninviting metallic plain, punctuated by hedges enclosed in cages, yielded to the gradual slope of "people-mover" smooth escalators down the sides of an interior courtyard containing a forest of 25-metre trees, obviously transplanted at great expense from somewhere nice.
We couldn't get into the forest, or into most of the library without paying the daily fee (20F), and walked along a hot northern corridor, back up, along yet another metallic desert overlooking the great construction zone around the tracks leading from Gare d'Austerlitz, over a hot bridge, and suddenly we were in Paris again, on the leafy and populated rue de Tolbiac.
We were expecting to walk through a thriving Chinatown but found very little that was Asian; it looked like a typical Parisian faubourg with the occasional Chinese or Vietnamese business. I stopped at a cave and bought wine for supper.
Heading towards our apartment, we walked up to Parc du Choisy and yet another playground, this one large, and thronged with children and their minders, both women and men. Once the kids had their fill, we picked up bread and pastries at Le Grenier a Pain which I ran back to the apartment, meeting the family at Librarie Flammarion in the Centre Commercial which turned out to be quite a nice bookstore, and paying a brief visit to the supermarket to stock up on essentials.
Dinner centred around great baguettes -- Retrodor and a l'ancienne -- with Salers, Crottin de Chauvignol, Roquefort, and Ardigasna, endive salad, sliced cucumbers, and a wonderful Corbieres rose to drink.
The kids had samples of the four slices of tarte we had bought -- rhubarb, pomme normandie, framboises, and "agrumes", which in this case was pistachio creme with grapefruit and orange -- and we finished off the crumbs after they had gone to bed without fuss.