In spring, and then again in fall, the sun shines into the living room at just the right angle to make a distinctive shadow on the wall. It's an Eiffel Tower wire sculpture topped by a magnetized wire daredevil. The wire guy was a gift from a friend in California. I always thought he should hang out on the top of the tower. Oh, là là !
With that, I must run. Tasha has an appointment to get her annual shots this morning. Chop chop!
We enjoyed a mostly sunny day on Friday, with another expected today. Of course, cloudless days are often chilly. I ended up putting a fire in the wood burner in the afternoon to take the chill off and to give the central heating a rest.
When the sun does shine in this time of year, it casts shadows around the rooms. This is a corner of the dining area with the Eiffel Tower and its shadow. Our friend Cheryl gave us the tower. It came from Pottery Barn, if memory serves, back in San Francisco. Back in the olden days. The little wiry figure (sold separately) has magnetic feet.
The Eiffel Tower is no stranger to this blog. It might be the monument that shows up most often in my posts about Paris. I have not done the research to confirm that. The photo is taken from the top of the Tour Montparnasse. This was before they had installed plexiglass barriers around the rooftop observation platform. I haven't been up there since they did that.
Our current weather is sunny, dry, and almost hot. We're planning some more work in the vegetable garden today in advance of setting out seedlings. It will need to cool off a little before we do that. Yesterday I did a little indoor paint project that I've been putting off for a while. It feels good to have it finally done.
Here's the last of my mini-series of night shot photos from 1988. It's taken from the Champ de Mars, looking through the base of the Eiffel Tower toward the Palais de Chaillot. Too bad about the construction netting, but stuff happens. Let's pretend that it adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the image.
Monuments like this undergo regular maintenance, cleaning/painting, and repair work. Some more frequently than others. One year, Ken and I were walking through the square in front of Notre Dame cathedral. The façade was covered in scaffolding and had been for several years. We overheard another tourist tell her friend, "The one time I come to Paris and it's covered in scaffolding." No matter when you visit Paris, something's going to be covered in scaffolding.
This is part of the fence that encloses the small garden at the southwestern corner of the Invalides complex. The garden, constructed in 1980, is formally called le jardin de l'Intendant. It's based on a design from the 17th century that, I assume, was never completed. Wikipedia says that the origin of the name is uncertain. The word intendant refers to a steward or keeper of the finances of an institution or, in France specifically, one who was in charge of the building and maintenance of royal properties. Wikipedia suggests that the garden's original designer may have held that position.
We're having another wind storm today. This one is predicted to be windier and wetter than yesterday's. Oh joy. I do not like the wind. The good part is that it's a daytime storm and not an over-nighter. Night time storms give me the willies.
I think I was wrong yesterday about saying that one of the first things I did when we arrived in Paris was to take a walk over to Invalides. Based on the order of my slides, the first thing we did was to go to the tennis tournament. That must have been a Thursday, giving the women a day off between the semis and the final on Saturday. But let's pretend; I'll show photos of the walk first.
Yesterday I drove up to a commercial zone (read: shopping center) just south of Blois. I finally ordered the new curtains for the living room after two years of waiting. We planned to do that in early 2020, then covid hit and we couldn't. Later, inertia set in and we just didn't get it together. But in recent weeks, we looked on line and learned how to take the measurements and we found a sheer that we liked. We decided not to order on line (in fact, the store we chose didn't offer that option) and just go up to the store to see the curtains in real life before ordering. They're non-returnable because they're custom made, so it seemed the prudent thing to do.
Turns out that I didn't like the curtains we saw on line. Too shiny. I found another sample that I liked and, although it was almost twice the price as the original, the store was offering 15% off, so I figured what the heck and went ahead. It's done now and the curtains should be ready in about three weeks. The process was easy and the sales rep was very nice.
I took advantage of being up there to stop at a big produce market for some good stuff. Tomatoes, avocados, broccoli, bok choy, and radishes, among other things. All in all, a successful morning.
We planned to spend the last few days of our Spring 2001 vacation in Paris. We had tickets on Center Court (Phillipe Chatrier) for the women's semi-finals at Roland Garros (The French Open). The hotel we chose was the Duquesne Eiffel, on the Avenue Duquesne near the Ecole Militaire métro station in the 7th arrondissement. This was the view from our street-side room.
We were familiar with the neighborhood from past trips. Our friend Cheryl was staying at the Hôtel Muguet on the rue Chevert, a short walk away. Both hotels are close to the southern end of the rue Cler, a market street popular with tourists. Also not far is the Hôtel des Invalides and Napoléon's tomb. One of the first things I did after we arrived was to go out for a walk in that direction.
...de fer. The Iron Lady. No, the other one. Before Margaret Thatcher got that nickname, it was lovingly (I assume) bestowed on the Eiffel Tower in Paris. This is what the tower looks like from the top of the Arc de Triomphe, looking down the avenue d'Iéna.
Tasha continues to recuperate. She's fine with being confined, most of the time. She's using the injured leg more and more during her short walks, but she still doesn't put her full weight on it when standing, often holding it up in the air. She has a good appetite, too, probably because she's on a diet and is getting less to eat than before the injury. On Wednesday it will be three weeks since her operation.
Well, here it is again. That enduring symbol of Paris and, of course, of France: la tour Eiffel (the Eiffel Tower). It's difficult, if not impossible, to be in Paris and not catch a glimpse. I don't know how many photos I've taken of it over the decades. This one is from somewhere* in the 15th Arrondissement, just south and a little west of the tower, not far from the river. I took it while walking in that neighborhood in the summer of 2006.
The tower was built for the Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) of 1889, the one-hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution. It was intended to be temporary, to be demolished after twenty years. But its value as a communications tower saved it. The tower and the city were later spared by one of Hitler's generals when he defied the German leader's orders to destroy them both as the Second World War came to an end.
* I figured out where. It's on the rue Saint-Saëns where it intersects with the Boulevard de Grenelle.
I took this shot back in 2016 when I spent the night in Paris on my way to visit the US. The Panthéon had recently undergone a renovation and the colonnade around its dome was open to visitors. I posted the color version of this image in 2016, so here's a re-worked black and white version.
Summer and fall are playing footsie with the weather. Summery days are alternating with fall-like temperatures. After a while the summery days will fade into memory while fall asserts itself.
