Back to the Marais...toujours beau

This morning was wet, wet, wet, but we metro'd over to the 4th arrondissement - le Marais - to visit the Musée Carnavalet.  We stopped at la Niche du BHV - the section of the BHV department store where you can find all things useful and fun for les chiens et les chats - to buy new bowls and treats for our furry friends at home (they do like a souvenir of the trip!) and dropped into Hotel de Ville (the Paris town hall) to peruse the brochures and make sure we don't miss anything special while we're here.

We stopped by the jardin at the l'Institut Suédois - in the grassed centre of the garden there is a sign inviting you to pick up a book, unfold a deck chair and sit and read a while - one woman took advantage of a break in the rain and did just that!

I love the Marais.  It is just the most beautiful quartier of Paris.  And the Musée Carnavalet is one of our favourite spaces.  The jardin is exquisite and, at the moment, features vegetable plantings edging the contoured French beds - a complement to the liberation of Paris exposition and signifying the vegetables that had to be grown during the second world war.

The exhibition at the Musée is "Paris - Libéré, Photographié, Exposé":  Paris - Freed, Photographed, Exhibited.  It is a wonderful exhibition of photographs depicting the signs of the German occupation of Paris, the barricades and insurrection of the Resistance fighters, the arrival of General Leclerc's troops and, finally, the American troops.  Photos by Robert Doisneau, Jean Séeberger, Henri Cartier-Bresson and René Zuber feature.  The photos are extremely moving, taken so close to the action - in one photo tanks roll through the Tuileries - where apparently much fighting took place - yet the bench seats and the lamp lights that we see today are there in the photos.

Afterwards, we were happy to spend a few peaceful moments in the jardin...