Tuesday 17 December - Blazons and Brassai

I took a short walk down to Saint Lazare this morning. There was a roped off line-up to get into Burger King which was supervised by tough looking bouncers in black uniforms and red arm bands. It turns out it was the opening of the first Burger King in France.  The company quit the country about 15 years ago over sanitary problems. They plan to open some 400 outlets here.  Quite a performance just to get a Whopper.  All the while a pianist was bouncing around while playing Gershwin on the SNCF communal piano.

A number of locomotives and trains still retain cast metal blazons or coats of arms.

This is on both ends of an electric unit working to Versailles

This is on one side of electric locomotive 115051

We went to City Hall to see the exhibition of photographs, mainly by Brassai who was active in the 1920-50 period. A Hungarian by birth, he fell in love with Paris and expressed his feelings through his photographs. He covered the way of life at all levels, particularly the Montmartre night clubs. He became a close friend of Picasso and took pictures in his ateliers. One picture that impressed us was of "Le roi des coiffeurs" sitting at an organ console in his salon. The organ seemed incongrous in this setting.

This is on the wall of a boutique in the Marais.

We walked into the Marais and had lunch - a dégustation of various fillings, meats etc with black bread and rye bread.

This was for the two of us but is was a lot anyway. Olives, hommus, creme of herring, stuffed vine leaves, tsatsiki, mushrooms, tabouli, pastrami, falafel, beef ball, pepper tomato.

The Place des Vosges was as impressive as ever and from there we took the Metro back.

On the way back we called into Diva et Chocolats to buy a baguette and came out with these two additional pastries, that on the right is a tarte au citron.  As we left the lady behind the counter said "À très bientot".