STL DPB ON THE ROAD - ATELIERE DES LUMIERES - VIEUX AMIS - LA VIE PARISIENNE

I'm not quite ready for this. Although my back pain is gone after the recent procedures, my gait is a mess and my leg muscles are like putty after a year and a half of under use. The muscles are barking (loudly) and I've become a major customer of the local Uber operation. But the show must go on.

On Friday, we went to the must-visit Ateliere des Lumieres, the workshops of light. It is an old iron foundry which now contains ephemeral, ever changing projections of art on some theme. This year it is Van Gogh and Japanese illustration. Later, we met some of our City Daily Photographer friends for a wonderful meal in an unpretentious cafe. You can't eat badly in France if you stay out of one of the (very few) McDonalds. That's me in the bottom picture, face in phone as usual.          

Yo, Vinny!

Towns and cities make their living off whatever they can. We took a day trip to Arles yesterday, where Vincent van Gogh spent some of his life. The place squeezes every euro it can out of him. There is great charm, however, in the placards the town has put up at the location of some of his famous paintings. The first below is in the old Roman arena, probably at a bull fight. The next is the yellow house where he lived. The smaller building in front is gone but that's the same one behind. You can see the same railroad trestle on the right.

We will be in Paris this afternoon.

MoMA

Field trip yesterday to the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. OMG was the city crowded. I don't remember this from when I was a child and a teen here. The subway line we needed to go from Penn Station to the museum was out of service so we had to walk up 6th Avenue past Radio City Music Hall and the back side of Rockefeller Center.  We could have used a bull whip to get through. Same when we got back to Penn on the way home, when people were emptying out of the city. Penn Station's current incarnation is horribly designed and a few hundred people were trying to press through a single doorway onto the platform for the train to New Jersey. Mrs. C felt in serious danger of being trampled at a couple of points.

I like to take photographs in art museums but there is nothing interesting in photographing the artworks. The fun part is the architecture, people interacting with the art and people taking pictures of the art on their phones. Starry Night, anyone? Or can anyone guess the neighborhood, if that's the right word, in the bottom photo? We've walked through it.

Home tonight.