Paris Day 4 (11/17)

Day 4 Paris, Friday. This was our last day together. After breakfast we walked to a French tea shop, Mariage Fréres. This was another of those places we were told not to miss. It was certainly interesting. It was in two shops across the street from each other. We went in one and spent a lot of time just smelling the different teas. There must have been more than a hundred from all over the world and all different types. Flavored, black, green… We bought a number of different kinds. Across the street in their other store, they had even more tea and upstairs was a small museum of tea.

It was getting to be lunch time. Tai and I wanted to treat Nancy and Pascal to a nice dinner. But just up from Mariage Fréres, Tai spotted a really nice looking restaurant called Kodo. After checking out the menu we decided that we would do a nice lunch and a simple dinner later. It was indeed a very nice lunch. We had the whole place to ourselves. We wondered how it could stay in business but in the evening we walked past it again and it was full. We all ordered the same entrée of shrimp. Two of us had the soup, two had the salad. One way to tell if a restaurant is a quality restaurant is to check out the bathroom. This was a quality restaurant. The bathroom was positively elegant. The décor of the restaurant was very Japanese. Tai asked the owner about the name and he said he named it after the taiko group called Kodo. We talked about the taiko group with him since we have seen them several times at Zellerbach in Berkeley.

After lunch we walked to the Centre George Pompidou. This is a very modern center for the arts. There is a large plaza outside where on nice summer days, lots of street performers gather. It was pretty quiet when we got there. We stayed on the ground floor because it cost to see the upper floors and we weren’t really that interested. There was a small separate museum dedicated to Alterier Brancusi which was across the plaza. Tai and I went in. It was pretty interesting. Brancusi had left his studio to the French State on the condition that it be kept intact. That was what was in this museum, his four room studio and many of his sculptures. There was also a small exhibit of guest artist Hiroshi Sugimoto’s sculptures. He does very interesting mathematical sculptures. I rather liked a couple of them. In the meantime, Nancy had stopped at a library to do some research on a very old mantel clock that she had. Pascal had to go retrieve his car from the parking lot before it closed for the weekend. Tai and I watched a woman playing the didgeridoo. She was very good! Tai ended up buying her CD.

After Tai and I wandered back home after purchasing some lamb chops for Pascal and Tai. Pascal showed up at home to tell us of a ‘Farmer’s market’ in a gymnasium next door. So off we went. It turned out to be very interesting expo with food stalls from all over France. Vendors who made their own cheese, wine, chocolate, pate, sausages, procuitto, tapenades, crepes, olive oil, olives, pies, sweets. One vendor had fur coats made from mink that she farmed. After a while, I went back to the apartment to wait for Nancy. When she arrived, we joined Tai and Pascal who were taking tastes of everything.

For dinner, Nancy and Doug had spicy pastrami sandwiches from a local shop and Tai and Pascal had lamb chops with a green salad.

The last event of the night was to find the mass in-line skate parade that happens every Friday night. We walked to the Hotel de Ville to wait for it. It was reported to have as many as 10,000 skaters. We waited for about an hour in the cold wind wondering if it was going to really happen when we began to see a few. They were followed by more and more skaters. There were perhaps about 2,000 skaters that filled the street.
It was getting late and we were all very cold, so we walked back to the apartment.