Padlocks and Paris

There is a fad among lovers that is going around the world. From Tokyo to Budapest, couples loop a lock with their initials written on it onto a bridge and throw away the key.

Ah, if eternal love could be so simple and so assured ...

Perhaps you've heard about it or maybe you read this article last year in the New York Times. I learned about the fad through Eric at Paris Daily Photo, so I wasn't surprised when I saw a bridge of locks on the other side of the Louvre, but it was indeed a sight to behold! The one photo I took in Paris of the Pont des Arts is a very meager representation of what is going on.

Apparently the Pont de l'Archevêché, in front of Notre Dame, was the first bridge where this craze began. Do a 'google' search for images and you'll see how some sections of the bridge are jam packed with locks!

Just for the record, many Parisians don't like it!

I railed against the temporary buildings in front of Notre Dame in yesterday's post as being ugly and I'm sure the same can be said of these locks. But ... I did find them interesting to photograph. 

I couldn't take more pictures of the Paris locks because The Hubby was casting looks my way that said he was antsy to move on. Since he and I have never done this eternal love lock thing -- we just exchanged promises in front of a judge wearing Birkenstocks -- I knew I didn't want to jeopardize my marriage:)

Besides, I had already taken several photos of the locks in Venice!

It looks to me like the Italians wised up and are actually accommodating lovers with special rails to hang their locks from! I see an advantage two-fold:
1) Venice's 'romantic' score rises like its flood waters
and
2) The actual bridge wood work and hand rails are kept safe from vandalism.

 

My favorite pic is this one: the bright red heart-shaped lock. It reminds me of that famous song "I left my heart padlock in San Francisco.":)

All I have to say is, if given a choice between this silly lock fad and the old-fashioned custom of locking lips, I'll take the latter!

The Elephant and Notre Dame

We arrived in Paris at Gare de Lyon via the TGV from Avignon. Our hotel, Jules Cesar, was a few blocks away. By the time we got checked in and were ready to head out, it was around 5:30 in the afternoon. The temperature high that day was 50 degrees, so by 5 p.m., as you can imagine, the temp was dropping. It would drop to freezing before the night was over.

BUT as you can see in the pic above, we did have clear, blue, brilliant skies!

Now, before I left on my trip, I had posted on Rick Steve's travel site asking for 'must do and see' advice. One lady said she loved simply walking the streets of Île Saint-Louis and getting a scoop of the world-famous ice cream at Berthillon's. Also, I am reading my way through the Cara Black mystery books, each one set in a different Paris arrondissement and featuring a young female detective who lives in a 17th-century apartment on Ile Saint-Louis. 
And, as if I needed any more encouragement, here's how Wiki describes le petit island: "formerly used for the grazing of market cattle and stocking wood. ...  A peaceful oasis of calm in the busy Paris centre, this island has only narrow one-way streets, no métro stations and two bus stops. Most of the island is residential, but there are several restaurants, shops, cafés and ice cream parlours at street level, as well as one large church, Saint-Louis-en-l'Île Church."
So, it was only natural that when we left our hotel, we took out walking toward Île Saint-Louis. 

As chance would have it, we walked past Saint-Louis-en-l'Île Church exactly as the bell tower was chiming 6 o'clock. It was a serendipitous moment for me. I may not have had a clear view of the church, under the restoration/construction netting, but I experienced it loud and clear!:)

Here's a better pic of the church tower:

It was a delight to just walk and ramble, window shopping and watching Parisians wrap up a busy day: picking up their sons at the boys school, meeting friends after work at one of the cafes .... And yes, we did see the famous Berthillon's and yes, it was tempting un peu but not enough. I prefer my ice cream on hot summer days.

Then, we crossed over to Île de la Cité. I was eager for my husband to see Notre Dame and the 'center of the Universe' as I like to call it: the Point Zero marker from which all the mileage posts are counted on French highways. 

Fortunately, others have taken pics of the marker. 

I don't have one to show you. 

I couldn't take one. 

I was in shock.

Smack dab in front of Notre Dame was a huge set of bleachers!
I was aghast!
My mind was reeling from what I was seeing.
I associate bleachers with football stadiums, not churches.
I couldn't understand it.
Were the bleachers there simply to afford folks a higher advantage point for photos?
Nah, you gotta be kidding? Perhaps something temporary for an Easter service?
I tried to make sense of what I was seeing, only to walk around the bleachers and almost have a seizure.
It was worse!

http://www.francebleu.fr/patrimoine/eglise/notre-dame-de-paris-fete-ses-850-ans-183781

There was this whole long, strung out monstrosity of makeshift buildings.

Buildings that had NOTHING in common with the design of Notre Dame.

OK, I don't have a degree in city planning, architecture or art.
Heck, I'm not even religious.
By the time we got to Paris, after having traveled from the southern Spain to Venice to Provence, the hubby and I were pretty churched out.
The pagans tortured the Catholics. The Catholics tortured the Protestants. So much killing and persecution in the name of God. It's a bit of a turn off:)
Nonetheless, I'm here to say that every bit of my agnostic sensibilities screamed that what I was seeing in front of Notre Dame was and is the UGLIEST desecration of a historical-pagan-holy-Christian site.

I wanted to cry.

What I find even more amazing is that after an extensive search online, I can't find anyone who dares say anything about it. It's like the elephant in the room that everyone refuses to acknowledge.

Website after website explains that the buildings are there to mark the 850th birthday of Notre Dame and apparently a trek inside through the ramps, passages and buildings are supposed to mimic a pilgrimage of some sort.

No one says the obvious: it's UGLY. It's terrible design.

I confess I was so turned off by it that I didn't go inside to see the displays or try to assuage my prejudices.

I've only one thing to add: Thank God it's temporary.

Any great work of art needs blank space around it to show it off.
Here's what Notre Dame is SUPPOSED to look like:

MIA: What I've Been Up To

It doesn't look like much ...

But Space No. 19 is soon to be "FrenchKissed."

I'm really excited about being part of a "new" antiques mall that has opened up in Vancouver, Washington  [also known as Portland, Oregon's suburb!]

If you're going antique-hopping this summer in the northwest U.S., I hope you'll stop by.

I've fried several brain cells (that I really couldn't afford to lose) coming up with ways to display postcards. I'm determined not to just have shoeboxes of postcards. To begin with, I'm working on a June Bride display.

However, I still hope to get back on track and share with you more pics of my Paris trip. Thanks for your patience!

Red Tape Affair

One of my 'complaints' about photo-taking in Paris is the dearth of construction and repairs going on. Scaffolds, gates, iron nets, barricades, fences, cranes -- and noise! Below is the entry to the Paris Opera House, now called the Palais Garnier. Quelle dommage! (What a shame!)

But as with all things, there are exceptions. There was one place where I found the red-tape, roped-off repairs to be very ... intriguing!

I kept studying the, uh, situation to ascertain the best framing of my subject. I bided my time as tourists came and went.

I had to carefully scope out the scene to find the best angle to use.

Then the lady in the red jacket and red boots came by! What perfect color coordination with the red tape! She was the perfect accent I needed for my memorable shot.

Funny, though, I can't recall what his face looked like ...

Mes amies, The Hubby and I started spring cleaning yesterday and re-arranging furniture. My body feels like it has been beaten with a bat:) So I knew I couldn't deliver much in the way of an informative travel blog today. However, I hope my brief post cracks you up a little and ends your Monday with a smile. 
A bientot!

Next Stop: Parc Monceau

I didn't arrive at Parc Monceau via the Monceau metro stop.

I came through the "back door"!

I was visiting the Nissim de Camondo house that has been turned into a museum. I had managed to get there without getting lost, so I was rather ecstatic. Serendipitously, while touring the Camondo's 1911 mansion and peeking out its windows, I discovered that it butts up to Park Monceau!

 The park was on my Wish List. I had seen it in my postcards . I wanted to compare what it looked like a century later. I'm happy to report that I loved what I saw and would heartily recommend you take a 'green' break in your tourist itinerary to visit Monceau. There are no boats to row across the pond, but it's still a tranquil place to enjoy a picnic. (I'm sure the young couple who were having having a lovers' tiff while I was there have moved on:)

A couple of columns are missing, but remember, this park was originally built in 1779! 

Phillippe d'Orleans, Duke of Chartes, (a cousin of Louis XVI) had bought the land a decade earlier.  In 1778 he hired Louis Carmontelle to design the gardens. Carmontelle was a Frenchman, a Renaissance man and jack of all trades, if you will. He dabbled in everything from playing writing and painting to architecture. His idea for the Duke's park was to create a fantasy atmosphere that would entice visitors to return every day. And he did this by scattering architectural elements representative of times past from different continents such as a Roman colonnade, a mini Egyptian pyramid, a Dutch windmill, a temple of Mars, a Tartar tent and such. 

Think of it as Disney's Epcot Center, ahead of its time. 

Since the French like their gardens manicured and orderly, the critics were quick to accuse Carmontelle of designing an "English" garden. As you can imagine, that didn't go over well. He rebutted: "It was not at all an English garden that was intended at Monceau, but  ...  

to put together into one garden all times and all places. 

It is simply a fantasy, to have an extraordinary garden, a 

pure amusement ..."*

I was particularly intriguiged by this sprawling ivy vine 

that has amassed into what looks like a tree over some ruins.

 Wikipedia says that a fifth-generation park keeper lives in apartments atop this rotunda at one of nine entrances to the park. I can't verify that. I can tell you that the bottom of the rotunda houses free public restrooms.

Sorry, I didn't take a current photo of the bridge, but it is still there! 

I couldn't help but imagine this tree as a young sapling when Phillippe bought his land in 1769.

One of the things I love about traveling is how everything stands out amid a new setting and environment -- like this flower.

My camera memory card was full but I was determined to get a photo. I had never seen anything like it before. This plant was just so unique. I patiently went back through hundreds of photos to find one I could delete from my camera so I would be able to take one more photo. 

When I return home from a trip, I like to keep in 'tourist' mode for a while and pretend I'm a foreigner in my own land. Imagine my surprise to discover that this unique flower that I had never seen before is in my own "backyard" at the Esther Short Park in Vancouver, Washington!:) It's called Euphorbia.

*To learn more about Parc Monceau and its history, read Wikipedia's writeup.

Click here to see the four antique postcard scans of Parc Monceau available in my Etsy shop.

Tick Tock, Around the Block

'Bout time I got back to blogging, hey?! 

The main reason I went to the Musee d'Orsay was to see this clock! For a brief moment, I was Hugo Cabret, hanging from the big hand. Brief indeed because I'm scared of heights:) It is difficult to get a photo of the clock because there are always so many tourists clamoring to get their picture posing in front of it. 

When you visit, just bide your ... uh ... time so you can get up close and look out. The view is impressive. Despite the gray and haze, despite the dirt on the clock face, it's impressive. Here's a 40 second video I found on You Tube. The exciting part is at around the 30-second mark when you'll see the huge minute hand move! 

There are actually two of these gargantuan clocks, one in each 'tower' of the museum. I missed the second one. From what I culled online, to see it you need to visit The Café Campana (formerly known as the Cafe de l'Horloge), one of three eating places at the museum.

Another reason I had to visit the Musee d'Orsay was to see the rhino and elephant statues I had come to know through my postcards. 

Both were originally displayed at the Trocodero gardens across the Seine. Now, they have been adobted by M'O, as the museum is affectionately called.

Sculptor Emmanuel Fremiet created "The Trapped Elephant" for the Universal Exhibit of 1878. According to Eric Tenin of Paris Daily Photo, back then the statue was gilded! After the exhibit, the elephant was moved out to the 16th arrondisment, where Eric passed it most every day walking to school.  As a side note, my neighbor across the river, aka Portland, Oregon, has a reproduction of one of Fremiet's statues, Joan of Arc, gracing a traffic roundabout in the Laurelhurst area.

The M'O was originally a Belle Epoque train station that opened May 28,1900. Hence, the 'theme' of being on time with the two huge clock towers and the ornate gilded clock.

Thanks to David Dennis for sharing this image on Wikipedia.

It costs 9 euros to visit M'O. What you get to see is priceless. More than 2,000 paintings and 600 sculptures (including another replica of the Statue of Liberty). There's also several floors with furniture displays.
I was on art overload by the time I left there: Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin ... Degas, Manet, Cezanne, Toulouse-Laurtrec ... the list goes on and on. I even saw "Whistler's Mother"! Among my favorites were the pointillism paintings. But, in the Kodak of my mind, there is  one painting that stands out:

I had two rounds of sitting on the bench in front of Renoir's Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette.

Don't forget that like many museums, M'O is closed on Monday. It stays open late on Thursdays.
Next door to M'O is another museum, Musee de quai Branly. Its specialty is 3500 works of art from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. I didn't go inside but I couldn't pass up taking this photo of the outside which has been transformed into a vertical garden:

To help you put M'O and Branly in perspective, here's another Google map view. Relatively speaking, M'O is just around the corner from the Eiffel Tower. That's 35 minutes and almost 2 miles around the corner. I did say "relatively speaking.":)

P.S. In case you didn't notice, on the right hand column under Discount Codes, you'll see a new code for the month of May to use in my Etsy shop. Have a happy weekend!