Sunday, March 13, 2011

Bonjour Pa-ree (2)

If you read the last post, you may be wondering where all the amazing art is, not to mention famous Paris scenes.  We figured you could get better photos of such stuff than we were able to take (especially using no flash in museums).  We did put a few links in there for you.  These are just some of the photos we took that you probably won't be able to see elsewhere online.  Now on to our second (and last) Paris installment.  (Except that there will be a link to another one Eric wrote coming up, as soon as it's posted on the 49 Writers website next week.)


This tapestry came from the Cluny Museum.  This is not the most beautiful tapestry, though.  They had this set of tapestries that they found recently with unicorns on them.  Here's a link to a bunch of pictures of them.  My dad took pictures of a bunch of these with speech bubbles on them.  I got my father an awesome porcupine postcard from one of the tapestries.  More pictures.




                                                  
Picture #1 is a sculpture...a chocolate sculpture we saw in a famed French chocolate store.  [I just had one of the pieces of fancy chocolate that we bought in that store.]  Picture #2 is me eating chocolate wearing my beret by the Seine with the Eiffel Tower in the background... my dad calls it Frenchiness Frenchified.  [Seriously, could there be anything more French?]


And here we are in front of the famous Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore.  (This link has a video made by the bookstore itself.)  I bought a book of poetry by Marilyn Hacker--I had to buy something, and this book of hers had poems written while she was living in the same neighborhood in which we were staying.  I couldn't resist.  Also, she uses form in interesting ways that I'm working with myself these days.  [Yay, rhyming!]  Hey, not intentionally.  After we all four made our way out of the shop, we sat for a while on benches out front and listened to the bells of Notre Dame just across the river.  A very intense [cheesy, Dad, cheesy] moment.



I took these fabulous pictures from our touristy-tourist tourist boat.  The first one is of the Eiffel Tower which I had an ambition to take a good picture of.  This one is through two pillars at the end of the Royal Bridge across the Seine.  The second picture, I think, is of the bridge Louis XIV built as an apology for the costliness of the palace of Versailles.  "Sorry I built Versailles, here's a bridge."  [We did go to Versailles for a day, sans Julie, but the pictures there were taken by Alex and Annabel and we haven't yet transferred them off their cameras.]  


The last picture is from our last day, much of which was spent at Pere Lachaise Cemetery.  [Gosh I look bad in that picture.]  I don't think she does.  I loved watching Julie explaining art to Annabel in various museums, but I wasn't able to get a good picture inside without flash, so here's one of Grandma explaining why some people have so much fancier tombs than others.  That, or explaining the movie Rabbit Hole.  This picture gives a pretty good idea of the weather we had the whole time:  sunny and a bit chilly.  Prominently featured in this picture is the yellow leather purse that Annabel got in the Rastro flea market in Madrid a few weeks ago.

I forgot--how do you say goodbye in French?

Au revoir.

Au revoir, Pa-ree

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