Category: Découvrir la France

Post by Ella Our AirBnB in Paris was in the African quarter. The accommodation itself was “lived in” so the host’s belongings did clutter up the space. It was two bedroom, one bathroom with a separate toilet. I’d put it in the category of “ok”.  One of the beds was pretty uncomfortable but the other…

Post by Ella The Principality of Monaco. The country is barely a dot on the map, occupying only 2 square kilometers. What country is smaller than Monaco one might ask? Only Vatican City.  Previously annexed to the First French Republic in 1793, Monaco successfully gained independence in 1814. Monaco is a constitutional monarchy. Located 17km…

Sunday we left late morning to catch a bus to the Chagall museum.  On exhibit were large canvases of Old Testament scenes.  With Chagall there are usually spirits flying around his canvases, so with my graveyard visitations from Paris still fresh in my mind I think I was more open to his angel-inflected Biblical paintings.   Then there…

Post by Ella We have been in Nice since Halloween and have a few more days here. Here are some photos taken around Nice.

Post by Ella Carousel de Nice. The first two level carousel I’ve ever seen. Music by Frank Sinatra. Carousel Garibaldi. A little more traditional with some bizarre accordion music. And then there is blockhead (aka square-face) titled “Thinking inside the box”. This massive thing stands 85 feet high and contains three floors of books, Designed…

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,…

On Tuesday we started the day off by taking the metro to the Gare Lazare neighborhood.  I’ve always liked the lyrical sound of those words coupled—Gare Lazare—reminding me of a similar train station where the Lumiere Brothers shot some of the world’s first film footage in 1895. We had tickets for a 12:15 visit to the…