Field trip

Ella and Elena drama-tically snacking on pretzels after camp.





Today Ella's camp took a field trip to the Musee Marmottan. It sounds like it was wonderful. The children were given a little tour of the museum, they got to try their hand at painting an impressionist painting of their own, they learned about how Monet mixed colors, and they got to choose a postcard print of one of Monet's paintings to take home (Ella chose Impression Sunrise). Too bad grown-ups can't go to camp!

Meanwhile, the rest of us explored the BHV (Bazar de l'Hotel de Ville) - a huge downtown department store with an enormous basement of do-it-yourself supplies, plus 6 other floors of things to look at. We stopped for crepes by the Pompidou center - Jonah loved the animated fountain. We also walked through the new Forum des Halles. This replaced the Les Halles open air markets that used to be situated in the center of Paris. The new mall is a monstrosity, a very ugly maze of underground stores and tunnels organized around a central glass-enclosed, funnel-like courtyard. Most of the surrounding stores are American, to boot (KFC, McDonalds, Foot Locker).

On the way home we took the metro to the Marais area (oddly, as we got on the metro in the center of Paris, a Metro musician was playing a medly of Jewish songs - Hava Nagila, Heveinu Shalom Alecheim - which got us in the mood for the Marais which is an Orthodox Jewish area of Paris). The Rue des Rosiers (the main street of the Marais) was very eclectic. It was a mix of black hat Jewish men, beggars, crazy people, tourists from Brooklyn, and trendy art gallery types. Not quite what we expected, but lots of fun for people watching. We bought a challah for Shabbat and came home to rest from our busy week.