Some of the details of the painting I find difficult and painstaking, being used to doing large, messy canvases. But understanding the basic structure is hugely useful, probably like it is for everything else. More than I learned, I am sure, at age 9 or 10 when Mrs. Van Ausdale, who was about 100 years old 50 years ago, at least that’s how it seemed to me then, taught my brother and me at her home. She had us paint to music, like Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and Smetana’s “The Moldau,” asking us to imagine the colour and structure of a painting from hearing the melody.

This being the 16th, we decided to head to the elegant 16th arr for lunch at the delightful Brasserie Le Stella, 133, av. Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo himself (Les Miz, etc.) died across the street. Not today, mind you, at least as far as we know.

Afterwards we walked down to the Trocadéro, taking a short side trip to the Cimetière Passy (Debussy and Fauré are two notables buried here), across Pont d’Ilena, under the Iron Lady herself (probably the most recognized landmark in the western world, no?), around the École Militaire, where Napoléon  Bonaparte was educated and past the underwhelming Y-shaped UNESCO building (Breuer, Nervi, Zehrfuss).

I have some French homework to do; Sandy is off tomorrow.

Parisians have apparently gone mad for pizza and we tried a new place near here, Pizza Chic. We liked Positano in the rue des Canettes better.