We'll Always Have Paris...

    To quote Humphrey Bogart. I really did mean to write while we were in Paris earlier this month but... hope these posts will make up for it.
    Anyway, this time, for our week-long stay, we made our home in a different quartier--Le Marais--just north of the Pompidou Centre. The apartment was on the first floor accessible by kindly (as in not too steep) stairs or an elevator so minuscule that the two of us and our luggage couldn't fit in at the same time.
    The apartment was tiny too with a kitchen the size of a shower stall. You could literally stand in the middle and cook or do the washing-up without moving. I think, in total, we lived in about 24 square meters, and that's not the smallest apartment I've seen advertised--that was around 130 square feet.

  

   We took the train there and back, abandoning the Renault at Pamiers station, catching the train to Toulouse, and then whooshing across a large chunk of France on the TGV. It always fascinates me how, travelling north, as the scenery flattens out, the rooftops do too, changing from russet-y tiles to slates. Gare Montparnasse is where you land and I'd sort of forgotten that it's a 30-minute hike underground to the Montparnasse Metro station. You would think they'd have had the decency to give them different names!
   Our major reason for heading off to Paris when we did were the various art exhibitions we wanted to see. In no particular order, we took in the giant Manet exhibit at the Musée d'Orsay, works by one of the Fauvists, Kees Van Dongen at the Musée d'Art Modene. Finally, we saw a fantastic exhibition at Le Grand Palais of drawings, lithographs, paintings and--Odilon Redon was a versatile chap--designs for carpets and upholstered chairs. I love the intense gaze of the young man in the Manet above (and the waiter looking on). Put that one on my Christmas lists and, if I were a squintillionaire, here are a couple of other works I would hang on my walls.

I just loved Van Dongen's great slabs of primary colours.

Odilon Redon's malevolent Smiling Spider. Isn't this wonderfully creepy? A companion drawing--"The Crying Spider"--is in a private collection but, sadly, wasn't included in the exhibition.

Memories of Summer--An Extraordinary Garden

   First of all, apologies for not posting in such a long time. We had a busy but wonderful autumn with loads of friends staying, market visits, I know, excuses, excuses. Mea culpa. I promise to post more regularly and to kick off with a look back at some of the terrific events we enjoyed over the past few months.
   Certain events you mark down on the calendar so you'll be sure to go there next year. Le Jardin Extraordinaire is now on the list. Back in September, on a stinking hot Sunday, we drove to the village of Lieurac about 12 km away not really knowing what we'd find.

     So come with me and I'll tell you what was there.

  Following hand-painted signs, we took a side road and, even though it was only 10:30 in the morning, the car park--a meadow shaved down to pale prickly stuble--already had a good few vehicles lined up in rows We joined them and, knowing it was going to be a sizzler of a day, covered the windscreen with the sun-shield. A dusty track led towards a house but, long before we got there, we were drawn into a tunnel of green. Built of branches, the tunnels linked two domes and everything was covered in greenery. You didn't have to stoop to get through but you did have to move to avoid the enormous gourds that hung from the greenery. Long ones, round ones, dappled ones... Elsewhere blue-violet-flowered climbers twined around their supports.

It was quite magical walking along this dappled pathway completely
surrounded by vines.

I don't know what these are but aren't they spectacular?

   

     Between all this lush greenery, we could see a meadow outside so crammed with flowers, it looked like a Monet painting. Exiting the tunnel we found people giving back massages, kids dancing naked under a solar-powered shower, sculptures, paintings, and a pathway that led down beside a river that chuckled and sparkled in the sun. All in all, a glorious, sensual day.

Down by the river, these strange "creatures" hung from the trees. Gourds had been
hollowed out, planted with grass and then hung upside down.

River stones meticulously stacked.

Circles of stones in the river filled with green plants.

The river flowed around installations like these--dozens of bright sunflower heads
framed in stones.

This barbecue put was huge--maybe three metres or more at its widest.
Lots of folk had camped overnight and I suspect this had
been the site of a huge communal feast. Peter pointed out that, at night, the view
from a plane would have been of a huge glowing heart.

Kids could put on plays in a miniature theatre.

Some brands of yogurt come in these little glass pots which everyone saves and uses as
tea-light holders. Hundreds and hundreds had been attached to wires along the
pathways that led between the flower meadows and down beside the river.

The event is as much about art as it is about gardens.

For lunch you could have baguettes with ham and cheese, or salad, or Indian food
and--on this high thirties day, cold beers.

London, here we come.

    I always forget how just how vast and sprawling London is. It took two hours to get there by coach, with at least one of those spent crawling through the suburbs past what seemed like endless kebab shops. Mind you, since the authorities started charging drivers a steep rate to take cars into the city centre, traffic has improved immeasurably. Instead of taking the Underground, we filled up our Oyster cards and whizzed around on the red double-deckers. (And for those who don't know what Oyster cards are...think of a credit card that you "top up" and swipe when you get on a bus. Brilliant.)

   Galleries, museums, Trafalgar Square the favourite meeting point on the side of Nelson's column facing the National Gallery, Charing Cross Road bookshops, Camden Lock on a Saturday morning, West End theatre--Felicity Kendal in GBS's Mrs. Warren's Profession, pints at pubs, pub lunches, terrific Malaysian and Chinese meals in Soho. We walked our feet off, my personal best being from the Imperial War Museum  back across the Thames (which I where took these pix of the Houses of Parliament--the classic shot used on HP Sauce bottles--and the London Eye), up Whitehall and finally into Trafalgar Square. As you can see, it was a grey day and, thankfully, not too hot. And did I mention shopping? Shame we were restricted to 10 kg of carry-on luggage each.

    Enjoy the snapshots. 

   

    

Well, hello Dali!!

   For the past few days I'd been researching a story in the Pyrenees. Now it was time to come home via the town of Bisbal where we hoped to find tiles for the kitchen counters. 

   I won't get into details except to say that we had a really pleasant stay in Palomas on the coast and an unsuccessful tile-hunt the following morning. We trudged from store to store, and made our way into a factory where a pleasant lady showed us around a semi-dark interior piled high with cartons. Even in the semi-dark, we could see that we didn't like any of the contents.

   So we climbed in the car, stopped at a mercato for bread, cheese and grapes, and picniced by the side of the autoroute. Not far north is the town of Figueros, famous for its Dali museum. We missed the turnoff. (It gave me great pleasure later, in the gift shop, when a survey-taker asked my my impressions to say "inadequate signage".)

   This is Salvador Dali's museum and burial place so, of course, the whole place is gloriously over the top from the exterior covered with sculpted bread rolls and crowned with enormous eggs to the interior.