Day 57 & 58: Bastille, Paris

It's been an amazing couple days at our other place in Bastille, Paris. Not only is our street really cool and full of restaurants and cafes, but a quick jump on the subway brings you anywhere you want to be relatively quickly.

We went to the Musée d'Orsay which housed many famous impressionist photos. Another dose of masterpieces. I was swooning all day.

I can't choose a favorite, but I'll go in order as we saw the museum and my favorites along the way.

Pardon the French. Google translate helps if you really want to know what it's saying.

Mike and I paused at this one for a moment. There was a beautiful haunting feeling about it that just drew you in forever.

Lautrec is one of my favorites. His whimsical, free and fun use of color help to create a lot of movement in his paintings.

Suerat has a sereness about his paintings that seems to take you to that place.

The Van Gogh room was crowded. There were a lot of works that drew attention but there was one in particular.

Van Gogh's self portrait.

It was interesting to see a Picasso in impressionist style.

And one more modern.

Renoir.

Self portrait of Renoir

Degas.

Monet

We went out on the terrace that overlooked part of Paris.

And we grabbed a couple drinks at a local French craft brewery.

We set up a wine and cheese tasting for the next day. There was a British couple, and two other couples from the states. California and D.C. We learned how to swirl and swig wines and champagnes. The pairings of the cheeses were very interesting and something I never paid full attention to before. A new thing I learned is that when you smell wines is when you describe them by fruit or spice (like berries, clove, etc) but when you taste, it is more about descriptive words like sweet, salty, bitter, or umami (not common). It was also interesting that when you swirl your wine, not only does it help aerate it, but you can also see how the wine drips down the glass. The slower it drips, the stronger the wine.