Another Day in Paris Flown Away

We made the most of another day in Paris and I have stayed up late (for me) grading papers. That was how I convinced my boss to give me all online classes, by telling her what satisfaction she would get out of imagining me grading papers in Paris.
Earl and I headed over to the market on Rue Mouffetarde this morning.
Pretty much any food that could be imagined could be purchased. Here's a seafood stall where the creatures looked as if they would crawl off their ice beds. As we walked past the fromagier, the smell of the cheeses was so strong. It made me want to stop and buy cheese. I guess that's the point.
Another thing that made me salivate was the sight of this white asparagus. I had hoped to find asparagus for dinner, but maybe tomorrow.
The stalls were selling huge bunches of lilac, which must be in bloom. Strange because the lilac is in bloom at home too and I thought Paris was ahead of us as far as flowers and trees blooming in the spring. I do hope I get to see, and smell, some wisteria in bloom. I'm hoping someday for a trellis across our front steps at home with some wisteria draped across the trellis.
The strawberries for sale in the market were the reddest I had ever seen. People were walking and munching on the fresh strawberries. A teenager walked past eating a strawberry. She had the bluest eyes and the reddest berry. She was already past me when she stopped. I asked Earl to take her picture. He said he felt like a stalker, but he took it. I think nearly any picture of this girl would wind up looking enticing. Isn't she gorgeous?
After the market, we headed for the Seine, where all things touristique are happening.
When I first visited Paris, I stuck to the Metro, the subway system. It's easy to use and feels safe. What I didn't know, was that the bus system, equally easy to use and safe, is closer to most things and allows me to see many Paris sights that I might have missed underground.
Earl and I bought a Paris Visite pass that lets us travel all we want on buses and the metro. We frequently catch a bus and figure out where we want to get off once we are on it. Tonight we were going to get on a bus and just ride the entire route so we could see the sights at night, but I had a few more papers to grade so we came home.
Our first stop was l'Orangerie, which is a small museum that houses Monet's water lily paintings.

The paintings look deceptively easy. Couldn't any one paint blobs of color and say they're water lilies?
Apparently not, because no one has pulled it off besides Monet. Even as his eyes were failing and his paintings got darker and darker in color, his blobs look like water lilies.
We had planned to visit the Musee d'Orsay on another day, (Hey! I rhymed) but the tickets to l'Organerie were cheaper with a companion ticket to the Musee d'Orsay. This museum focuses on impressionism and it's hard to believe the number of paintings done by Monet, Cezanne, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Gauguin, etc... The sheer number makes your eyes go numb.
Here's what I learned while roaming through the Musee d'Orsay today (I rhymed again!), I want to be the kind of woman that Renoir painted, not the kind of woman painted by Degas, Cezanne or Toulouse Latrec. All of the women painted by Renoir seemed happy. They were enjoying life. They were nicely rounded and living life.
The Musee d'Orsay allows no pictures inside any more. What a shame because even the museum, a former train station, is phenomenal.
So I'll leave you with a photo of me and Earl on a footbridge across the Seine, and I promise a food blog tomorrow with lots of "food porn" as requested by Suburban Kamikaze, who needs to get her skinny butt across the ocean to visit France or Greece or Italy, or someplace and start living life before it passes her by!