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…
Antibes
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…
The French do love a good carousel
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…
Fast track to Picasso
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…
Salade niçoise
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….
Colorful Coté d’Azur
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…
Pétanque
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…
Ou un sort
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…
No news is good news
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…
The magician, the dead, & Deux Magots
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,…
Roaming the Right Bank
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…
Just go with it
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…
Tomb raiders
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…
Random Oddities
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…
Boho chic
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…