Saturday on Quai Branly

Quay Branly runs along the left bank of the Seine, from the Pont de l'Alma to the Pont Bir Hakiem. It is a lovely but incredibly crowded walk at all times, because as well as the Musée de Quai Branly (fascinating anthropology, ethnology and ecology museum) the street borders the top of the Champ de Mars and leads to the Tour Eiffel. Since I wasn't going to the tower, I swam upstream against crowds who were!

(But of course I took a picture or two.)




Where I went was a new place to me - the Japanese cultural institute (Maison de la culture du Japon.) It is worth walking by just for the architecture (the building dates from 1966, and is a striking addition to the area.)

I was lucky enough to catch the last few days of an outstanding exhibit of Japanese woodblock prints, from the Manos Collection, whose home is a museum on the island of Corfu. Much more information here.
I know - it's all in French, but even the tiny pictures give some idea of the richness of the collection.

(M. Manos collected his prints in early 20th-century Paris, at the height of "Japonisme," the fascination with all things Japanese. The Utamaro prints in the show were worth a visit all on their own.)




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Lights everywhere!

Paris knows how to celebrate. Tonight I took a leisurely (read 'slowed to a crawl by heavy traffic!') bus ride to the Place de la Concorde, to see the Grande Roue (ferris wheel) and other illuminated objects.

I was just in time for the hourly light show from the Tour Eiffel (no pictures here, because my little camera wouldn't do it justice - see "Midnight in Paris" for a sense of the display.)

Tonight it was mild, clear and dry, and a full moon floated over the merrymaking. The Champs Élysées is lined with lights that suggest UFOs. They start blue then morph to pink and white, often as you are trying to line up a picture.








A Christmas market adds to the gaiety. Tonight most people seemed to be interested in drinks and snacks, or just out to enjoy the evening.




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Paris au temps de grisaille...

Just another way to say "cloudy with a chance of rain." But the weather is still mild, for December.

On the Pont des Arts, a hardy artist displayed his work. Sales were slow.



Spontaneous art on the bridge includes locks -- hundreds of locks, fastened to the chain link fencing.







It gets dark here soon after 4:30 pm, but schools aren't out until after 5, even for young children. In spite of the dark, the Parc de Monceau is the place to be, for small children, their mothers or nannies.




I think the carousel runs all year.




Window decorations are not just for holidays. This is a shoe repair shop near the apartment.







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More about Paris

Late leaves & flowers, Parc de Monceau

Except for the lights, and the early sunsets, it could be late October rather than December. Thanks to the handy weather app, I know this mild weather will continue for a while.

The apartment is near the Parc de Monceau, also the Musee Cernuschi, where I went today. Current show is of Chinese artists who came to Paris beginning in the early 1920s, eager to learn more about western painting styles, but also interested in incorporating their own traditions.

The artists banded together, and were first recognized with an exhibition at the Jeu de Pomme in 1933. Many paintings in the current exhibition were acquired by French museums at that time.




This picture is of Shana, a daughter of one of the artists. She is, quite literally, the poster child for the exhibition, her face appearing all over Paris.

Aside from the current exposition, the Cernuschi has an extensive collection of objects from Asia, much of it acquired in the 19th century by M. Cernuschi. His widow acquired the elegant townhouse that is now the museum, and installed the collection.

Here are a few more objects:














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Pictures!

Turns out it is more of a hassle to post pictures while blogging from the iPad. However, now that I have bought an app that works, I expect Blogger will soon issue its own. Probably free.

Here's a kitchen closeup at VM, result of today's shopping.


And here is Rue de Courcelles, illuminated.





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Paris pour Noel

"Did you stop blogging because you weren't traveling?"

It's a fair question. In the winter I wrote about books and knitting, not always in that order. And I didn't travel.

Now I'm back in Paris, at Villa Monceau. Since my allotted month this year is December, why NOT be here for "les fetes." Luckily for me, various friends and family have accepted invitations to join me from time to time.

Paris is dark early in the morning, and goes from light to dark very quickly late in the afternoon. Then the lights come on. Rue de Courcelles, the main street of the immediate neighborhood, is hung with decorations that remind me of the lights strung across Main St. in Moscow, Idaho, circa 1956. Nice then, nice now.

I'm learning to blog from an iPad - how does one upload a picture? No blog post until I figure it out!


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Location:Villa Monceau,Paris,France

Winter

A good time for knitting and reading. The scarf required concentration that got in the way of other things.

After finishing many long lines of garter stitch, I went back to reading - more of Ismail Kadare, this time Chronicle in Stone, a novel based on his memories of a wartime childhood. Kadare grew up in Gjirokaster, an Albanian city that was invaded and occupied during WWII first by Italians, then Greeks, the Italians again, then Germans, and finally Albanian Partisans, who ushered in Enver Hoxha's long dictatorship. (Kadare also invokes previous invaders - the Slavs, the Ottomans and the Romans, among others.)

I enjoy memoirs and history, but often a novel can tell the truth far better than non-fiction. Kadare was only 4 or 5 when the war began, but the novel's main character is older. An introduction to the book says Kadare has revised and edited the work several times since its initial appearance in 1971.

Nevertheless, when reading Chronicle in Stone, you feel this is what it was really like to be a child in a war-wracked city, nowhere near the main battlefields of that war, but constantly affected by far-away incomprehensible events.

Recently the UU Partner Church Council Chatline had a lively discussion of books to read before going to Transylvania. Along with recommendations for histories of all descriptions came a few suggestions for novels. (I recommended Miklos Banffy's 3-volume Transylvania Trilogy, which I don't really expect people to read, although I've been raving about it for 10 years to anyone who would listen.)

Then, last fall, after a 5th trip to Romania, I finally read the classic we all avoid mentioning: Dracula.

"Dracula," the name, not the novel, is the first thing most people talk about if you tell them you're going to Transylvania. Bram Stoker, the author, had only a cursory acquaintance with Transylvania, and yet his descriptions, over-wrought and intentionally foreboding as they are, can be startlingly accurate. The train journey from Cluj to Bucharest goes through jagged mountains that seem to rise straight up from roads and rails, through dense dark green forests. It's easy to let the imagination run.

What's interesting about Dracula the book, is the insistence, throughout, on its modernity. It is written as a series of letters among a number of characters who often contrast their contemporary, progressive world (of the late 19th century) with the primitive superstition represented by the idea of the undead. When they must deal with ancient horrors, they communicate by the ever-present telegraph, and rush back and forth by train.

It's a good read, but I'm glad I waited! Here's a picture of the real Transylvania, far from dense forests and forbidding mountains...(but that IS a graveyard in the foregound.)