Part 3 JOHN'S STAY IN PARIS PAGE THREE

Part 3 JOHN'S PARIS STAY PAGE THREE, FOOD AND THE PICCASSO MUSEUM.

As just about everyone knows food and eating are very important to the French. Around the Marais, you can get everything from Macca's and Starbucks right up to the fine dining/cordon blu stuff. Most popular are the cafes and bars that sell excellent food that in Oz we would have to go to a proper restaurant for. Below is a photo of The Church Of Saint Paul.

A very useful landmark named after the district if you want to find your way around. It is also a very useful navigation point for some nice cafes. Where else but in France would you get a basic salad served with pate fois gras. Also one of the cafes  in this area has become my new "favourite." It's called Cafe L'Ardoise, I don't know what it means in English.

Below is a photo of a "basic salad," French Marais style. Although it is "basically" a salad, it's all the trimmings and presentation that really make it upmarket. Along with the salad comes a generous serve of deli meat in some dressing that is to die for. The whole ensemble being finished of with  a very generous thick slice of baked Camembert cheese. Of course with its own dressing. Don't even ask about the bread! Wash that down with a nice glass of wine, followed by a rich dessert and coffee, and plans for the afternoon get delayed or cancelled. But move on we must. Thank goodness the trip to the Picasso museum was made not in the afternoon, but first thing in the morning.

And some of the people who work there.

The Picasso museum is housed in an old Marais style house so that its exterior doesn't clash with the architecture surrounding it.

However, the inside has been completely refurbished with painted walls and arches like a old style Spanish house to reflect Picasso's Spanish birth. The collection houses most of Picasso's work, but the top level is an exhibition of some of Picasso's private collection. Having seen some of this artist's work in Malaga, Barcelona, and Paris, I now think I can see what he was getting at, and I've started to like some of it. Although I've seen his cubist, blue period, rose period early works, ceramics with fish bones etc etc. I still think my favourite piece of his, is a conventional portrait, before he started to reconstruct it, or deconstruct it whatever it was. 

However, I think his best painting was the one he did of me on my birthday, but you will have to wait for the fourth and final page for that!

P.S. I thought you might like this little poster hanging up in one of the cafes. It says "A meal without wine, is like a day without sun." I must remember that when I pour my muesli.