Category: Découvrir la France

Saturday morning on our way to catch the bullet train to Antibes we passed people bundled up in jackets and parkas.  The temperature was in the mid-sixties.  Come on folks, toughen up!  Unless…unless the news, which we’ve been blithely ignoring, had reported another variation on weather weirdness with a cold front moving in.  Frost hits the French Riviera! When…

Post by Ella Walking by the 10th or so carousel I’ve seen since coming to France, I wished I’d been taking pictures.  Each is unique. The Carousel of Extinct and Endangered Animals that I posted about in Paris was probably the most unusual. Way back in sixth century Byzantium (today’s Istanbul), the concept of the carousel…

Post by Ella Expedition day. We took the bullet train to Antibes. 13 minutes. We barely sat down on our plush 2nd class upper level seats when it was time to stand up and get off the train. One way fare per person 5€. Practical Note. I’d managed to buy train tickets online the night…

Post by Ella I felt obligated to try a Salade niçoise in the place of its origin, Nice.  I do love a good salad and the caprese salad I’d had on Halloween night was outstanding. The traditional niçoise salad is composed of tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, niçoise olives and anchovies or tuna, and dressed with olive oil….

I caught a slight bug on our last day in Paris, but if there’s any place to recover from a cold I can’t think of any better than Nice.  Nothing like a little salubrious sea air along with a night’s sleep not suffering from jet lag.   This morning we took a bus into the hills and…

Post by Ella A few last notes about Paris.  On our last day in Paris, after a fun time with Méliès in Bercy and admiring the joyful grave of Simone and Jean-Paul (I need to reread Simone and wouldn’t you know it…I live with someone who owns all her works 🤷🏼‍♀️), we headed into Luxembourg Gardens…

Post by Ella Ghosts, goblins, skeletons, and witches…it’s Halloween in Nice! I am ecstatic to be out of Paris. Just walking off our EasyJet flight into the fresh sea air was rejuvenating. We couldn’t figure out how to get a one way tram ticket from the airport into Nice so we hailed an Uber. Checked…

When we travel we rarely have the time, or the inclination, to read, or watch, the news.  We map our daily destination, choose our mode of transport, luck on a good café for coffee, and then explore museums, historical sites, markets, parks, neighborhoods, interesting monuments, fascinating architecture, and then, after sampling the local fare, if we…

Georges Méliès’ grave is one I should have visited when we were at the Pere Lachaise cemetery.  I’ve always thought that the imaginative silent films he made at the turn-of-the-century were extraordinary.  When most of the other filmmakers at that time were shooting rudimentary slices-of-life, Méliès was already experimenting with special effects.  Based on a Jules Verne story,…

Post by Ella We. ebbed and flowed today. I am a Monet fan so that’s where we started the day. The Monet museum lacked a few of the huge canvases I had remembered from 2018. But still, some inspiring works. The temporary exhibition of trompe l’oeil (“deceives the eye”) was unique. It was crowded but…

Ella’s already detailed our walk to Montmartre.  Let me add that it was another fine day weather-wise.  So far in our stay we haven’t had to use umbrellas.  If there are clouds, they vanish by mid-day.  The temperature has been in the low sixties which, for me, is great for strolling around.   The forecourt below the steps of the…

Post by Ella The artist “Invader”, aka Frank Slama, started creating street art back in 1998. Mostly ceramic tile. Little mosaic pieces resembling items from the 1978 video game “Space Invaders”.  I hadn’t noticed one until our stroll through Montmartre. And speaking of invaders, fungi are a strange looking species. We happened to walk by a…

Post by Ella Montmartre is known as the artist’s neighborhood and worth a few hours of exploring. The Sacre Couer is located up at the top of a hill and if you brave the 197 steep steps, the reward is a spectacular view. (Spoiler…there is also a funicular if your knees are too rickety). Many…

We began our day by transferring from one metro line to another to get across the Seine to the Invalides stop  a few blocks from the Rodin museum. The Beaux Arts building, formally the Hôtel Biron, was purchased by Rodin at the turn of the century.  He turned the ground floor into studios and later donated it…

Post by Ella Rodin’s realistic and giant depictions of the human body never cease to confound. The sense of tension in nearly every piece rarely fail to evoke emotion. Horror in the case of the Burghers of Calais when you know these six sacrificed themselves to King Edward III for the “greater good”.  Passion when gazing…