Wednesday in Paris November 4

Wednesday, November 4 – Paris
Tom & Toni got here yesterday and we are having a great time so far. Our hotel is in the Marais in a very nice neighborhood. I must admit that Tom was right in wanting to stay here instead of the cheap place I found. This hotel is much nicer than the one I was looking at and I think it sets a good tone for the rest of the trip.
After we checked into the hotel we walked around the neighborhood. It feels very much like a place where people live rather than where tourists visit. Lots of little grocery stores, pharmacies, and shops catering to Parisians. Students hanging out and everywhere, unfortunately, people smoking cigarettes. One good thing though, I don’t know whether it has been legislated, but there appears to be no smoking inside restaurants.
For dinner we went to a place pretty close to the hotel. At 8:30 pm we expected it would be busy but were surprised that it was jammed packed with locals. We had to wait about a half hour but it was worth it.
Today we purchased three day Metro passes which was a wise idea. We probably took 20 different rides getting from one place to another. We also walked quite a bit. Went to Gare Lyon station to get our train tickets for Saturday, of course we first went to Gare Nord thinking you could buy the tickets at any station. Wrong.
We walked along the Seine although we were hindered by booths that were set up to sell antiques (and junk). It rained on us briefly and was briskly cold but felt great.
Our big event of the day was going to the D’Orsay. It has the best Impressionist art collection in the world. The museum is in the process of being renovated. The DeYoung Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco will be having many of the D’Orsay paintings there so we will get to see a lot of them again soon. Unrelated to that I was surprised that many of the paintings have been to San Francisco before (I remember them well). Examples include Claibotte’s painting of workers finishing a wood floor, many paintings exhibited as “The Impressionists in Winter” show a few years back, etc. Anyway we spent about 2 ½ hours there and got pretty tired.
On the way home, we walked from the Bastille Metro station criss crossing blocks being pretty sure we were getting close to our hotel. We stopped and directions of two young fellows sitting outside a restaurant, not yet open, smoking of course. They confirmed we were close and gave directions. It turned out they were cooks at the restaurant and told us we should come there for dinner that the food was great. We did and it was.