Woke up this morning with a little bit of a sore throat so after getting my stuff ready for the day, I headed out to find a pharmacy. That proved to be a much more difficult task than I had anticipated. I am used to the US where everything is open seven days a week and there’s always a 7-Eleven or similar store open 24 hours where you can get cough drops and cold medicine. That is not the case here in France. When I looked on Apple Maps there were multiple pharmacies within a 10 minute walk of where I am staying but only one was listed as being open today. Unfortunately when I got there I discovered that it wasn’t open on Sundays! I did find it very amusing that on the outside of the pharmacy was a condom vending machine. Obviously, that is something people need at times when the pharmacy is closed!
What was open was a very busy outdoor market, what I assume is the regular Sunday market. There were several fruit and veggie stands, fromagerie vendors, fishmongers (the salmon in particular looked incredible), and even a vendor who not only sold leather goods, but also repaired them.
I decided to take a chance in finding a pharmacy near my first stop of the day, which was the Basilica of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, a Catholic Church in the second arrondissement. I had heard that its walls were covered in ex votos, little inscribed marble plaques, with pleas for assistance and messages of gratitude to various saints. There are over 37,000 of them all around the church. I learned that there was a shrine there to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, the saint that I am named after. Apparently, this was a favorite church of hers.
It is a lovely church, with soaring ceilings, beautiful stained glass windows, and the ex votos everywhere were just amazing. You could buy a large candle with Saint Therese’s face on it that would burn for nine days or a smaller one that burned for a day or two. It was amusing to see the two contrasting payment methods, the old-school one of a box with a slot where you put in coins or bills, and the new one with a credit card machine.
After I left the Basilica I was in luck, there was a pharmacy in the neighborhood so I picked up cough drops and throat spray. There was a really cool building, obviously very old, but covered in a metal lattice work in a beautiful, intricate floral design. I passed a church where a group of the French version of Girl Scouts were selling baked goods. No packaged Girl Scout cookies here!
It was time for some caffeine so I stopped at a café on the Rue de Rivoli and got the French breakfast which consisted of a café crème, orange juice, baguette with butter and croissant with jam. Right up my alley! Apparently there was a 10k taking place starting and ending near the Louvre. I saw a few people with their medals walking around and several came into the café for their post run meal and beers – even though it was only 10:30 in the morning!
I passed lots of fancy shops and hotels and had a misty view of the Eiffel Tower on my way to the Musee de L’orangerie. This time I was smart and booked my ticket ahead of time which I was very grateful for because the line for people waiting to purchase tickets was very long and the one for those of us who already had tickets was much shorter. I spent the bulk of my time in the two circular rooms that held Monet’s Water Lilies murals. The rooms are the perfect setting for those paintings. I only wish that more people had read and obeyed the signs which asked for silence as Monet envisioned it as a space where people could sit quietly and enjoy the beauty around them. Luckily it wasn’t really crowded so it was fairly easy to get unobstructed views. I felt the more I looked at the paintings the more they seemed to change and transform. Amazing!
The museum is not very big, so I was able to look at everything which was nice. I learned about Marie Laurencin, an artist I can’t believe that I had never heard of. I just love her style of painting very ethereal looking women with dark eyes. She often incorporated dogs and other animals into her work. There was also a nude painted by Andre Derain which intrigued me. I loved her voluptuous body, and that the painting showed the folds in her stomach. How I wish that kind of beauty was still celebrated.
There was a special exhibit of works by an American painter, Robert Ryman. He is one of those kind of artists that I just don’t get. All of his artwork was painted white. And while it was interesting to look at the different textures and layers of color, I just felt like it was a bit silly to build a whole career on that. But apparently he made a living that way.
More cool artwork on the way to the metro.
My next stop was to the far side of Paris to the Philharmonic. It is a fascinating building, looking a bit like a crunched metal container, but when you get up closer, you can see much of it is interlocking birds, and the motif flows down into the walkway stone walkway up to the main entrance entrance. They were holding a competition for women conductors, and that afternoon was the rehearsal for the three finalists who would be competing for the final prize that evening. The rehearsal was free to attend, and it was fascinating to not only get to hear the music but also see the whole process of a conductor working with an orchestra. They would play for a little bit and then the conductor would stop and talk about some changes she wanted to make, then they would play part of the piece over again and then move to another piece. This six judges were also there watching the rehearsal. My favorite was the second conductor, she was so wonderful in the way she worked with the orchestra. She was very positive and fun and just made it seem like a very joyous experience. Two of the pieces were by established composers (Brahms and Debussy), but one was a new piece by a woman composer who was actually present at the rehearsal. It was very different from your standard classical music piece. It used the same instruments but in a different way – lots of plucking of strings, and blowing through mouthpieces of woodwind instruments and different kind of sounds from the timpani and glockenspiel. It was a cool way to spend the afternoon.
On my travels today I went through Metro stations that I hadn’t been through before and some had some beautiful artwork in them. I ended up hopping off a half a dozen times to take pictures, which wasn’t a problem because there was usually another train coming in 2 to 3 minutes. There are a few other stations I have heard of that have artwork and I’m thinking about spending a little time one afternoon just riding around and checking them out. It’s too bad BART stations aren’t as decorative. On one of my metro rides a busker came on with an accordion and played some lovely music, at a different metro stop there was a guy playing an electric guitar on the opposite platform. I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to hear more metro music during my time here.
