2023!

        The old year is over, and the new year is upon us.

        Best wishes for 2024!

        Wishing you blue skies and joy!

Hawaii in Winter

Southern France in May

Centre Pompidou

This morning, we went to the Musee national d'art moderne, which is housed in the Centre Pompidou.  When the Pompidou was built, they made a special point of putting as much infrastructure as possible on the outside of the building, including ventilation tubes and escalators rising 6 floors.  So it has a striking, non-traditional appearance.

The city views from the top are outstanding.

Front of the Pompidou

Back of the Pompidou

The escalator

View of the rooftops to the west

City view to the southwest

Equally outstanding was the Germaine Richier exhibition on Floor 6.  She was an immensely talented and very creative, 20th-century, French artist, primarily a sculptor.

A photo of Richier from the Expo brochure, looking a lot like my French mother

Early in the exhibition a large photo on the wall showed Richier sculpting a maskless fencer from a nude model, posed to get the legs just right.

The Maskless Fencer

Wonderful collection of realistic sculpture and wildly imaginative art.

Clockwise from upper right: Bust of Naldone, The Poet (George Borgeaud), The Warrior,
and The Magician 

Storm man and Hurricane woman

Preying Mantis

Large, medium and small Grasshoppers

Six-headed Horse

Devil with claws

Along the river

Another trip to Paris, another day cycling along the Seine.  Yesterday was quite warm, today was much cooler and windy.

We rode on both sides of the Seine, down to the Champ-de-Mars park.  While most people go there for the Tour Eiffel, we go there for the exercise and to see interesting sights along the way.

The Tour Eiffel is separated from the Seine by one street.  Many people arrive to visit the site by bateau (boat).

Bateau dock

A gondola being towed upstream

Across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower (Palais de Chaillot)

It was fun watching people posing to capture the Tower in their photos creatively.  Some people came to lie on the grass.  Others came to draw their own version of the Eiffel Tower.

The art class

As we were cycling around the gardens of the Champ-de-Mars Park, we discovered a monument that we had never seen before: Le monument des droits de l'homme et du citoyen (The monument of the Rights of Man and the Citizen).  This monument was installed in 1989 on the bicentennial of the French Revolution.  It is very complicated, including sculptures of 3 adults, one child, and two obelisques.  Tiny text is written over much of it: the French Decaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen (from 1789).

Back in Paris

After a quick, high-speed train trip, we are back in Paris.

It is sunny and warm here, so after lunch, I walked to Ile de Cite (an island in the Seine) to look at Notre Dame.  Restoration after the 2019 fire will take many more years, but they are working on it.

From the west

The viewing stands for people to just sit and gaze at Notre Dame

From the SW

From the south

From the SE

From the east

After circling Ile de Cite, I walked to the Hotel de Ville and stood in line to view a retrospective on 60 years of street art in Paris.  It wasn't quite what I expected, but I enjoyed it.  Here is some of what I saw.

Spray paint and masks, frequent staples of the art form

Banksy art

One last trip to the sea

As we have to turn in the rental car tomorrow, we made one final excursion to the Mediterranean today, riding on some of our favorite bike routes.

One thing that I haven't mentioned is all the grapes growing around here.  Grapes grown in the sand are known as vignes des sables (vines of the sand).  Here is one small vinyard in the sand that we cycled past today.

Our ride today was quite warm, and lots of people were heading into the sea, including me.  It was super calm, so I took off my shoes and socks and waded in up to my knees.  If I had a bathing suit with me, I would have gone swimming.

The plage (beach) at La Grande Motte

Selfie in the Mediterranean

The view from the water, La Grande Motte

Aqueducs de Barbegal

The ruins of this pair of Roman aqueducts are near Fontvielle.  One aqueduct powered a hydraulic flour mill at the south end of this site.  The other supplied water to Arles.  The flour mill (4th century) was sited on a hill above flat farmland.  It's impressive, and a lovely site.

Red poppies at the aqueduct!

The chute where the water flowed to the flour mill

Part of the flour mill

Part of the flower mill

Happy Memorial Day!

It's a holiday here in France as well: Second day of Pentecost (the end of the Easter season), known in Great Britain as Whit Monday (the day after Whit Sunday, the British name for Pentecost).