I Love Paris In The Winter, When It Drizzles...

There are so many things I’m going miss about Paris.

Here are some that immediately come to mind and some more of my favourite images of the city (neither in any particular order) :

The No 72 Bus – surely one of the world’s most picturesque transport routes. I will certainly miss my Tuesday night bus-ride along the Seine, with the Eiffel Tower illuminated and occasionally an orange moon in the sky alongside.

Tonight I was early enough to be treated to the sparkling light-show that lights up the tour every hour, from Pont Alexandre III.

An unplanned but fitting closing night performance.

Bread (Come to think about it, a lot of the things I’ll miss involve food!) These people have forgotten more about how to make bread than most other cultures have ever known.

Late European summer nights – love the happy sounds rebounding around the courtyard. And even though the coming winter and all its paraphernalia feels so familiar to me as well, this is one happy camper who is delighted not to be hanging around for another European winter (ever again, if she can possibly avoid it)!

Authentic pains au chocolat and decadent croissant beurre (as if a croissant needs more butter)! The real deal.

Scarves and collars – honestly, finally the pressure will be off and I can go back to being a slob. Parisians are just born knowing how to tilt a beret at a jaunty angle, casually knot a flowing winter scarf and sport a turned up collar to make James Dean envious. There’s no point even trying to emulate their style DNA – they can spot an imposter from a hundred metres.

Cheese – if you can milk it, you can make cheese from it and sell it in specialist fromageries and may it ever be thus!

Pedal Power – I’ll certainly miss the bikes and it may well be some long time before I stop automatically photographing every one I see.

On my way home this evening, I actually saw a guy pedaling home in a leisurely fashion, with a kitchen sink strapped on to the back of his bike.

And, who needs bike-paths or even roads for that matter? Every kind of vehicle can be ridden on every kind of surface, who cares if it’s a footpath? There’s a funny kind of transport anarchy that is amusing, once you know what to look out for when you’re ambling along the street window shopping.

This is hardly a very long-thought-out or exhaustive list and I’m sure I’ll have time to reflect upon and add to this list once I’ve made it onto the plane tomorrow and drawn a deep breath.

* * * * * * * * *

Finally, a fond, final au revoir today to our dear Andre.

You would have loved it here and savoured every minute, I’m sure.

We will always miss you.

Second Spring

Despite the valiant – some might say defiant - burst of summer weather we’ve been enjoying in Paris over the last few days, it feels like Autumn is upon us with a vengeance at last today. Morning has been taking its time to dawn for weeks now, a cool northerly wind accompanied the sun when it eventually arrived and the shock of the evening closing quickly in – all undeniably autumnal characteristics.

The Grands Boulevards were the starting point for my cultural excursion today – savoured a little shopping alongside the spectacle of the Opéra building, before heading back to Beaubourg. Enjoyed the small but perfectly formed Rachel Whiteread Sculpture show at Galerie Nelson-Freeman; casts of small everyday objects in gelato-coloured pigments and resins.

Upstairs she had created an ‘icy’ blue dolls-house and framed her quirky postcards, featuring gouache and polka-dots (loved the way they were delicately mounted too so you could enjoy the shadows from the cut-outs). Couldn’t help but notice some very obvious and unattractive sets of plugs in the otherwise pristine, minimal room – I thought how fitting it would have been if she had cast them too!

A small Nancy Spero retrospective from their permanent collection started at the Centre Pompidou today and was worth a look too. I’ve always been a fan of her work, not least of all because she uses paper, but also her eclectic collage style and the unusual composition of her drawings also appeals to me. (Although not strictly a bicycle, I also snapped today's two-wheeled contender for today's 'velo du jour' tethered outside the museum with a bright pink bike lock.)

Finally visited the Atelier Brancusi today. It’s seriously stunning. To see all those well-known pieces in one place, alongside and in relation to one another and in that gorgeous light-filled space.

Since I’ve been in Paris, I’ve been so preoccupied with whites (rather than – for those who know my work – my beloved blacks and greys!), which is no surprise, given the light that bounces off the white stone of the city’s architecture, but it was fantastic to see Brancusi’s pristine (there’s that word again) whites and immaculate surfaces.

Even his tools were so beautifully arranged. Had to spend quite a while there absorbing it all – or was that resting after all the shopping?