Day 4, Friday, Sept 1, 2023

It takes a while but we finally manage to leave our apartment at 2:00.  We are still moving a bit slowly, or at least I am.  I was awake until 4:00am last night, so I guess I am still on Alberta time.

First priority was to find a health food store so I could find some gluten free bread.  We see this interesting fellow on the way.  The sign he is sitting on reads Peripheral Invasion.   Not sure what that is supposed to mean, but we see more of his friends a bit further down the road.

We do find another grocery store called Casino which is huge, and we buy some more groceries.  The grocery stores here do not organize their aisles anything like at home .  For example, baking supplies are not all together, sugar is in one place, flour in another aisle, spices are somewhere else entirely, and so on.  We head back home to eat and then finally at 4:30 we catch the metro to go to the Sennelier Art store. We walk through the big square in front of the Louvre with its iconic pyramid.  There is now a fence blocking off this area to keep out street vendors, dogs, and bicyclists.  I don”t think we will be visiting the Louvre this trip.  We spent a couple days there in the past and I visited it several times during my month stay a few years ago.  We are going to explore other smaller museums this trip.

I love visiting the Sennelier Art store but they didn’t not have very many sketchbooks this time.  I finally find one that I think should work for life drawing and Bob snaps this photo of me at the cashier. When I saw it I wondered who the grey haired lady was!    Cézanne,  Degas, Van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso, Bonnard, Modigliani, and Chagall were all clients!

The cashier offered me a gift, a postcard of the store at the beginning of the 20th century.

Here I am in front of the store which has barely change in 136 years!  I have to say that the art stores at home have a much broader selection of art materials than this and many of the other art stores that I have visited in Europe over the years.  I am very fortunate to have such amazing art stores at home.

We walk to the Tuileries Gardens and find two of the iconic green chairs to sit and have tea and cookies while enjoying the view looking back towards the Louvre.

My first attempt at a selfie.

We need to find a spot to park our rental car the last night we are in Paris so we check out the street parking prices…and were rather shocked! 

This is our apartment. we are on the fourth floor which would actually be the fifth floor in Canada, and no, there is no elevator.  I have circled the living room and bedroom windows to our apartment.