Paris (Louvre, Les Puces)

Sunday we went to the Louvre in the afternoon and saw a great exhibit on Leonardo di Vinci's last painting (and ultimately left unfinished when he died), Saint Anne, the product of twenty years of thinking and work about anatomy, bodily dynamics, and light and shadow.  And of course the standards (Mona Lisa; Winged Victory; though we could not find the Venus of Milo).

For dinner we went to Le Train Bleu, a restaurant in the Gare de Lyon.  It's named after the famed Train Bleu, the night train that ran from Calais to Nice from the 1920s until the TGV cut the time by more than half. All first class and heavily decorated in blue and gold, hence the name.  Like its namesake the restaurant is done in over-the-top style of the Belle Epoch.  It's on the mezzanine and one can watch the trains come and go from the windows on one side.  We sat on the other side and watched night fall on the square outside. Notice the brass hat rack running behind the banquettes.  The food (duck) was not as spectacular as the setting, but it was a lot of fun, made more so by after-dinner calvados!

Yesterday we spent the day at the huge Marché aux Puce (flea market) at the northern edge of Paris. We had read that it was open Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, so we went on Monday thinking there'd be less of a crowd.  True enough, but many stalls were not open.  A lot of furniture (from 18 century to art deco to MCM), a surprising amount of orientalist stuff, silverware, swords and guns, and a ton of junk.  It was a bit disappointing but we still left with some stuff -- a linen nightdress, some gifts for sons and mothers.  On Sunday we also visited a brocante (another word for a flea market) on Ave. de Saxe in our neighborhood, and picked up a few items. Smaller but somehow more satisfying.