A Saint Louis Wedding

This is a Saint Louis photo blog, although you wouldn't know it at a glance these last couple of weeks. On Saturday, after a tour of the Palace of Versailles with the rest of the human zoo, our friend and colleague Versailles de Quimper (be sure to check her post today) took us on a tour of parts of the royal city that tourists don't see, followed by a terrific dinner with her and Olivier of Evry Daily Photo. I don't think you can dine poorly in France as long as you stay away from McDonald's. 

But, back to the point. One of the major districts of Versailles is Saint Louis. We visited the cathedral as a wedding party pulled up, with the bride and groom in an ancient Citroën deux chevaux. It was a small group but the bride was lovely and tourists like me hung around taking a few snaps.

Long flight home on Monday. May get more pictures edited, although I actually have a fair bit of work to do. Heavy week ahead.                          

Around The Pompidou

Paris skies were lead gray on Friday. It was neither warm or cool, but very humid. Not a great day for tourism. We made it to the Pompidou Center and not much else. We are getting older. The forced-march style of tourism doesn't work so well anymore.

These scenes are all outside the museum. The man in the top photo was in a wheelchair, playing exquisite accordion. The fourth shot is one of several sculptures in a pool of water  by Niki de Saint Phalle, well-represented in St. Louis. 

Out to the Palace of Versailles on Saturday, followed by dinner with Versailles de Quimper and Olivier.

An American in Paris

I had Gershwin's music in my ears today as we walked around the city. (Why do they call it the City of Light? It not any brighter than, say, Chicago. If there's a City of Light, it's Tokyo.) Anyway, it was a cool, gray day Thursday. Pictures were where you found them.

We made the obligatory visit to the Orsay Museum. Lots of 19th Century art, lots of views from its Left Bank balconies. It was originally a train station and had huge clocks in its riverside corners. Good photo op. That's the Louvre in the background of the first picture.

We also found ourselves on Les Grandes Boulevards, doing a bit of shopping. Fashionable Japanese women seemed to be flocking to Au Printemps for the Kedzo collection. Not in our interest or price range.  

Louvre Madness

The Louvre is a battle. The visitor requires both strategy and tactics, even mid-week after European kids are all back in school. We didn't choose the whole field of combat, rather picking and choosing certain skirmishes. Still, it wore us out. After just a few hours I felt like the boy in blue in the bottom picture.

Street Art In Arles

As the French say, a chacun son goût. Biere a la pression is draft beer. Douche is shower. Cuir is leather.

Incroyable! We were looking for a supermarket at the Gare du Nord, near our apartment in Paris (Google Maps has its location completely wrong). A local woman came up to me in the street, asked me in her own language where the entrance to the Metro was, I understood her, answered her question (sure hope I was right) and she thanked me profusely. Progress. It felt good.   

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.

Another Reason To Love France

Ok, I'm a Francophile. Not that I have anything against the splendors of my own country but some things here are incomparable.

We had a long Sunday lunch with our colleague Nathalie of Avignon Daily Photo and some of her family. She and her partner live in a centuries-old stone farmhouse outside of Avignon, near the wine making town of Beaumes de Venise. We walked along the hillside after the meal, past an old church, vineyards and the canal that irrigates them. We saw grassy plants covered with tiny white snails.

The house has four bedrooms and you can rent it for a week during the summer. It would be heaven. Click here to get information. Do it. There are only the two of us so if anyone is interested in splitting it next summer let me know.