336 hours in Paris

Antique furniture store on Rue LaGrange. My impromptu wanderings often led me to the 3rd, 4th and 5th arrondissements. On the map they look like stegosaurus plates straddling the Seine in east-central Paris. 1. The metro smells the same. A combination of bowling-ball cleaner and burned rubber. It is not unpleasant. The Musee D'Orsay opened in 1986. Works of artists born after 1820 were moved here from the Louvre. Sacre-Coeur as seen from 4th-floor Airbnb apartment. 2. I realize more than ever that I am an inefficient traveler. Pre-trip, I'll spend 30 to 40 hours on Pimsleur language discs, but I do cursory research and have no day-to-day plan. Once abroad, no habits take root; I am always learning and kept on my toes. This also makes me hopeful, in the sense that this is the way the world should be. Line 7 leading to Tolbiac. The Paris Metro continues to grow. The Villejuif spur (Le Kremlin-Bicetre, et cetera) opened in 1982. The Jonas bookstor...

Flea market in the 3rd arrondissement. Doubt I'd call it impomptu or even amateur ― but deals can be found if you're willing to dig through some boxes. It's le week-end, meaning Paris' attic liquidators are lining neighborhood sidewalks. Funny how other people's junk seems so much more interesting here! If you pick up an item for inspection, be aware that as soon as you place it back, it's fair game. A guy snapped up an amusing Mao Tse-tung alarm clock as soon as he saw I was interested in it. Congratulations, sir! This lady complained nonstop for a minute that I had taken a picture of her and her stuff. My French isn't very good, but my impression is that her husband told her to chill. Gouged doll's head and some antique cases. Tantalizing! Toy cannon and family photos. Create a new identity! Some old corkscrews, a midcentury clock and other oddments.

School project at the Musee D'Orsay. Seeing "Le Dejenuer Sur L'Herbe" in 1863, President Napoleon III declared it "an offense against decency." Today, if the president of my country went on Twitter to denounce a painting it would prove a gold mine of publicity. T-shirt and meme farms would work around the clock to meet demand. Unrelated fragments from the news cycle would be folded into the effort. A composite of Manet and Tom Petty, wielding a 40-inch paintbrush like a guitar ― on a stage outside the Mandalay Bay, no less ―would make the rounds. Hashtag: "WontBackDown." Edouard Manet's "Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe." The museum attendant, seated, seemed to genuinely appreciate this Chinese guide's animated description of the painting. The compressed depth of field was a clue that something was up. French art would never be the same. When Manet's "Olympia" was exhibited at the 1865 Salon, so many phys...

A jambon-beurre consumed today at Le Bougnat, an old-school brasserie at 28 Rue de Saintonge. Big fan of sandwiches (or "sandwichs," as they are often listed in the city), in part because of their Seussian portability ― you can eat them in a box, you can eat them with a fox ― and also because they are fucking delicious when the French make them. Why is this so? Well, the French baguette goes for anywhere from 90 cents to 1.20e today and is better than any grocery or "artisanal" bread available in my hometown for 5 times the price. They come out of hot, steamy ovens and when torn open, the glutinous, cratered mini-world you were dreaming of on that 8-hour plane ride eagerly reintroduces itself. "How ya doin'?" it asks. The correct reply is, "You were missed." French baguettes are not all created equal, but nearly so. Bought at a boulangerie they range from good to excellent ― there are no Division II baguettes. Once you start eating ...

These little pies take the cake. If I walk out my front door and fall on my face, literally half my body will be inside Maison Landemaine, a chain boulangerie but nevertheless the neighborhood's best, with lines out the door from 6:45 a.m. to 8 p.m. If you haven't been able to find any tartelletes citron there the past couple weeks, I've got 'em all.

Part of the Petit Palais' permanent collection. The delicate pastels ― sensitive to  daylight ― are downstairs. At the Petit Palais today to see the Redon and Degas pastels exhibit, a number of museum-related questions dogged me: How long do we spend in front of each artwork? Twenty seconds? A whole minute? Two minutes with each of the 150 pastels in the basement of this 1900 exhibit hall would add up to 5 hours, not including a lunch or pee break. A show of hands of those who spent 5 hours at this exhibit. I know I did not. Naturally, our eye selects what it likes or knows, and even the seasoned gallery goer who does not waste precious minutes peering at titles and catalogs, who has shoulders that can withstand the buffeting of pushy headset wearers and is tall enough to gain a clear vantage of his preferred images ― even such a museum visitor sturdy enough to withstand the scrum and is passing at last under the sortie sign into the sunlight can feel like opportunities wer...

Mini-Arc at Denfert-Rochereau. Northern Paris is not served equally. This is evident at every daytime hour and easily confirmed by your own app, which shows real-time availability of the program's bicycles. Abundance in the heavily touristed city center, in this case on Boulevard Filles du Calvaire. Chronic shortages on Rue Joseph Dijon (Simplon), above, as well as Clignancourt, Lamarck, Barbes, Poissonniers, Custine, the stadium, etc. Busted bikes don't count.

"I don't think there are any borders when it comes to painting," says David Hockney. As an artist, he is something of a Swiss Army knife, with interests ranging from cave painters to 21st-century digital drawing techniques. Rereading my last post, it is obvious I have nothing original to say about the capital ("Parisians like food"), nor do I have any special insights about the most important British artist of the last 50 years ("He painted swimming pools"). But I learned a few things at the Pompidou Center's stunning David Hockney exhibition, which is in town only for a couple more weeks. Among them: 1) He designed opera sets for "Turandot" and "Woman Without a Shadow." 2) He developed a number of large photo-collage compositions he called "joiners" using images he took with a Polaroid camera and a Pentax 110 (a sub-miniature available on eBay today for less than $10). 3) He began drawing on the iPhone in 200...

Art wall on Rue Ordener covers up view of the old SNCF station. The admonition against grocery shopping on an empty stomach applies even more keenly in Paris, where you want to buy ... everything. I am living at the foot of Rue du Poteau, one of the city's great food streets where independent boucheries, boulangeries and fromageries beckon like sirens on the rocks of Scylla. Unlike Homer, I always give in. Home base: Blue-collar, ethnically mixed neighborhood around Place Jules Joffrin. Always on the lookout for la fromage affine . Rue du Poteau, a deadly street for calorie watchers. The locals seem to shop frequently and carefully, hunting for just the right ingredients. Another galaxy: Slow-cooked, salt-cured rabbit and duck in a can. Stylish shopfront signage evokes an erstwhile Paris. The city's residents are by every measure highly discerning epicureans but endearingly lack self-awareness of this fact. They simply won't tolerate mediocr...