Speculoos!

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 Day 48
There was a rap on our door this morning and Roger and I looked at each other in astonishment. We know nobody here in Paris who would come see us; the only visitors we have had at all were Jane and Mary Ellen, and they are long gone. Roger opened the door to discover a postal delivery lady there with a package. She required his signature, then left. We are at a loss to explain how she knew where to find us – our apartments are not numbered, and we live on the second floor of a 6-story building and there are 18 mailboxes, all with just names. Ours has our name and our landlords’ as well, but there is nothing to tie that mailbox to our apartment. Anyway, we opened our package and found 2 diet Dr. Peppers, a taco kit, a bottle of peach amaretto syrup, a small packet of coffee, some barbeque rub, our medications, and the best thing – a picture of our grandbaby (in utero). The agreement was that she would send us our medications, as we receive them from a mail-order pharmacy per our health insurance, but they will not ship overseas, so Shelli and Ronnie agreed to be our intermediary for our prescription maintenance medications. Thanks to both of them!

We bundled up this morning and went to the market. We bought some lovely smoked almonds as well as fresh vegetables for salads and some fresh beets. Yum! On our walk yesterday evening we discovered a store called Picard, which sells exclusively frozen foods, so we went to check them out. We bought a few items here, but we are leaving in two weeks and cannot afford to fill our freezer or, indeed, our refrigerator.

When we left there, Roger took the market stuff and frozen food and went on home while I dropped into the grocery store for some milk, cheese, ham and Speculoos. We discovered it yesterday when Roger was looking for peanut butter, but didn’t know what it was so we didn’t get it. Later in the day I read something about it and couldn’t resist getting it. Some of you may have had Speculoos cookies – they are small ginger-flavored shortbread cookies from Belgium or the Netherlands which usually come in their own individual wrappers and are often served with coffee or as a dessert on an international flight. Anyway, there is now a Speculoos spread, which, to put it mildly, is divine! I am having to resist indulging in the entire jar. I could eat it the way some people I know can eat Nutella. I am not overly fond of Nutella – I like it well enough, but I am not sufficiently enamored of it to eat whole spoonfuls of the stuff, but Speculoos – now that’s a different story! YUM!

After lunch we walked to the subway for a trip to the Musée d’Orsay, which is Paris’ modern art museum – modern being a relative term here. The Louvre contains objects from prehistory to the 19th century. The d’Orsay contains mostly paintings, photography, sculpture and furniture dating from 1848 to 1915. The building itself is a delightful work of art. It was built at the end of the 19th century as a railway station, but was put out of use in 1939 due to its short platforms, which no longer served the longer trains needed for a growing Paris and environs. It underwent several other uses before the French government decided in 1977 to convert it to a museum. The museum opened its doors in 1986. It is full of wonderful impressionist and post-impressionist art from such painters as Van Gogh, Degas, Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, Renoir, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec – enough to you’re your head swim! There are plenty of other works there as well, including Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist’s Mother, an Edvard Munch work, and a nice collection of sculpture, including Bourdelle, Rodin, Camille Claudel, Gauguin and others. There were many rooms we didn’t even get to visit, as my museum legs set in after a couple of hours. But it was a delightful way to spend a cool, rainy afternoon. We walked home, but I wanted to mention that, on the way to the museum, as we entered the subway, just after we validated our tickets and turned a corner, we were confronted by four uniformed guys who asked to see our tickets. We showed them and were quickly waved on past. They were there checking to see that everybody had a validated ticket or pass. Apparently there are plenty of riders jump the turnstiles or push through behind other passengers and don’t bother to pay. I understand that the fine is 25€ on the spot or, if you wish to contest it, you can make some sort of arrangements but if you lose, or if you just didn’t have the cash on you to pay, then the fine is 35€. Ouch! We always make sure we are legal.