For Chris (and other jazz lovers)

We spent our penultimate night in Paris at Duc de Lombards, a well known jazz club that showcases musicians from around the world.  We "discovered" this place in 2000 when it was at a different, more modest location.  In any case, we heard a terrific quintet led by the trumpeter Dominick Farinacci.  Besides Farinacci's truly excellent horn, the group included a piano, stand-up bass, drums, and percussion. 

The best song of the night, "Tango No. 3," was written by Farinacci himself.  The set also included standards such as a terrific arrangement of Cole Porter's "It's Alright With Me" and, as a bit of a tribute to the home folks, Jacque Brel's "Ne Me Quitte Pas."

However, the true star of the show was the pianist, Kris Bowers.  Wow.  From his first solo to his last, he was absolutely amazing.  I got the feeling that in about a decade, I'll be able to say that "I saw Kris Bowers in Paris in 2012 before he really hit it big."  My initial sense was that he was part Thelonious Monk (above) and, given his ability to play such that if you closed your eyes you'd swear there were two pianos, Art Tatum.

And then late in the set, Farinacci revealed that Bowers had won the most recent Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition.  He was unbelievable.  And he's 23 years old.

Versailles, Volume 2

Versailles' gardens are also justifiably famous. We spent as much time in them as we did in the "house," and with good reason, as you will see below. 

As a gardener, the gardens were endlessly awe-inspiring and inspirational, both the formal "rooms" and the less formal tracts of forested land. Unlike other gardens we've seen on this trip, these were immaculate. It probably comes as no surprise then, that we actually saw gardeners working in teams to trim, rake and weed these immense grounds.

Below, a view towards the chateau through the south parterre.

It was nice to see that even at Versailles the yews are not trimmed exactly the same. Apparently nature can be shaped, but not bent.

Below, two views of the Orangery, which was one of my favorite spaces to look down upon from up high. The first image is taken from a terrace near the chateau, the bottom is a detail from the same spot. 


Versailles reinforced that a garden can be immensely interesting and visually pleasing when working only with evergreens. Many areas of these immense grounds were only green, but the textures, variances in tone and leaf shapes made the spaces optically interesting.

Two above is Dave in front of the chateau, at the base of one of the long grassy fields (just mowed) forming a vertical between the "house" and the water you see below, known as the Grand Canal, an apt name. This body of water is enormous! See those small forms out on the water above? They are row boats that can hold at least 6 adults. This is a serious body of cross-shaped water, whose full extent is very hard to grasp from photos, and indeed, even from being there it's hard to comprehend how huge it is.

 
These manicured yews are interspersed with classicizing sculpture lining the pathways and grassy field you just saw above. In fact, if you look closely you can see them behind Dave. I loved these!! This is the sort of thing I hope to one day do in my yard. Even one such yew would feel like such a triumph. Again, it was nice to see that nature doesn't always cooperate. These weren't identical to others cut just like them, but the gardener had to deal with what nature provided. Good for me to remember!

Below, a pathway leading from the grand canal to the Grand Trianon, one of the other chateaux here. This one was used primarily by court ladies and is built to take advantage of summer breezes for the purposes of cooling. The gardens, which you see me in below were more human in scale, although still enormous. This was also one area where color was allowed (see the detail of one bed below). Interestingly, a sign at the start of the garden recalled, by quoting a missive from one court lady to her servant, that guests the night before left early complaining of the strong perfume of flowers from the garden! (Or perhaps they were just bored to death of the tedious conversation...)

The long walk back through the drizzle...still beautiful. 

(Also, below, a detail of one bed we passed in this area close to the house. The colors here were cooler, more blues and less red, as you can probably see.)

 

Versailles, Volume 1

Versailles is the triathlon of tourist experiences. It's right up there with the Vatican and the Louvre, although they probably beat it with the sheer tourist mania displayed per cubic meter. However, Versailles requires not only physical stamina to cover its more than eight square mile area (unless of course you rent a golf cart to tool around on), but it also demands a kind of mental stamina to experience and process the incredible amount of visual stimuli it provides--both good and bad.

We were prepared! Thanks to friends' experiences and help from guidebooks we bought our tickets ahead of time, arrived just as the palace property opened on Thursday morning. Shortly after looking at the property map we dispatched with the "burden" of seeing everything here, which in truth is impossible to do and do thoroughly in one day. What most people--including us--didn't get until we were there was the sheer immensity of the property (it makes Schonbrünn, which dedicated readers will remember we already saw in Vienna look like a quaint guest house) and the fact that what most of us know as "Versailles" is really the "chateau," as in ONE building. The palace property actually has 4 chateaux, although the large hunting lodge you see in the photos below is certainly the largest and most elaborate of the group.

Here Louis XIV, XV and XVI (before his untimely end) whiled away the hours.

Storms threatened the whole day, but it wasn't until about 6:00 that the skies finally opened up, which luckily coincided with when we were tired and ready to go.

I've divided this post into two parts, the palace proper--that is the hunting lodge--and the gardens, which were a whole other wonderful experience separated by lunch at Angelina's, one of the onsite restaurants where I had my first macaroon and discovered, to my surprise, that I like them!

Our arrival at Louis' doorstep.

His coat-of-arms greets us at the gate.

Looking at this gate, where angry French demanded Louis XVI's head, it's not hard to see why France had a revolution. This gate was recently restored to its original glory, which required the application of over 100,000 sheets of gold leaf! (You can see it in the sun in the first image--blinding! And, unbelievably decadent.)

Me, inside the gate, within the courtyard where carriages once dropped off their royal guests. (Notice how chilly it is. We haven't been complaining--just re-wearing the same 3 things! It hasn't made it out of the 60s since we've been in Paris.)

The man of the hour (or multiple hours, I should say), Sun King Louis XIV by Gianlorenzo Bernini. If this trip has proven nothing else, it's shown that Bernini got around...oh, and that he can sculpt like nobody's business! This bust commanded the room it was in and put the other sculpted busts to shame.

The absolutely breathtaking Hall of Mirrors. This room is justifiably famous. What a space! It's captivating and magnetic. I didn't want to leave it, despite all the tourists, which is saying something.

Dave is nonchalant in his excitement.

I leave you with a hint of what's to come...here is a shot taken from one of the upstairs rooms.

Mona Mania

The Louvre was quite a full-frontal assault on the senses after the morning of relatively quiet looking. It was loud, hot, impossibly crowded (like ants in a hill) and filled with forbidden popping flashes and tired tourists. The first 45 minutes of the experience was, frankly, disorienting and disillusioning. Was this to be our Louvre experience? But we rested, moved away from the vortex of insanity--Room 6-- where a certain Leonardo painting hangs, we adjusted and we enjoyed ourselves AND saw amazing art.

But here is a slice of what I like to think of as a kind of madness for the Mona Lisa:

1. A "fast track" to The Mona Lisa, which actually prevents one from seeing things like, Michelangelo's Slaves, Raphael's Madonna of the Meadow, etc., etc.

2. The unbelievable mosh pit of tourists crushing forward to see (and snap) said portrait. My favorite part about this image are the warning signs flanking Mona that warn you, the viewer, to be aware of potential pickpocketing as you gaze on this "quasi-holy" visage. (Even pickpockets have no shame it appears, and the tourists pushing to the front were no better in that regard.)

3. Stage right.

4. At the front--I am stunned to find a.) that she has either been turned into the nicest piece of office decor or an altarpiece and b.) that I can't get anywhere near Mona. She has a 3 foot wooden "shelf" in front of her, an additional semi-circular barrier and another rope line (see above). She has more protection than most rock stars can boast.

 5. And now for the snarky...At least at a rock concert people know why they are there.

 

Our Pre-Louvre Excursion

Today was a fabulous sight-seeing day in Paris. We started at Notre Dame, continued at the Ste.-Chapelle (my favorite building in the world except, of course, for Wrigley Field) and concluded, after a late lunch, with the Louvre. The first two stops were sublime. Tourists aplenty to be sure, but the spaces defied the noise and forced one to look UP. We thoroughly enjoyed this morning of colored light, soaring architecture and royal (in every sense of the word) beauty. See below for yourselves...

 

En route

 At about 108 feet tall the nave is as stunning as it is tall.

Me, happy to be in Paris!

The facade of the Ste.-Chapelle, which was built by Louis IX to hold relics of the Passion of Christ and to serve as his own private chapel. It was once attached to his royal apartments on the chapel's upper level and I like to imagine Louis, slipping into the chapel in his satin azure p.j.'s covered with fleur-di-lys in order to glimpse the splendor of this space again and again.  How could one, especially Louis who so closely aligns himself with this building--even depicting himself in the glass inside--turn his back on it? We had a hard time doing so.

One of the great monuments of Gothic architecture, it was an exciting moment as we awaited our entrance... (Note Dave at the end of the line, wearing shorts on a rainy, 55-degree day and loving it).

Drum roll..............

...fifteen, 45-foot tall windows containing over 1100 biblical scenes. WOW! The podium below is where Louis displayed (for a select and special few) his precious relics, dispersed and destroyed during the French Revolution.

The jewel box nature of this structure is much-written about in the history of art and with good reason. In fact, it is the lasting impression I take away from this building on my most recent, that is today's, visit--gold and huge fields of colored light delicately embracing a space where one feels lucky to be.  Exactly as I suspect Louis planned one to feel.

Bonjour Paris!

Both Aachen and Brussels deserve their own posts and they will get them, but for the 3 of you actually reading the blog, we wanted to skip ahead to where we are now and where we will be for the remainder of our trip...PARIS.

We arrived in Paris this afternoon around 5:00 p.m. The City of Lights is just as beautiful as we remembered it being in 2000. The rain clouds parted and blew away as we pulled in to the Gare du Nord, as if heralding our return! We checked-in to the Hotel St.-Jacques in the Latin Quarter (5th Arr.) and headed out for a 90 minute walk through the center of this always stunning city. Below are a few of the spots we stopped along the way.

The "queen" of Paris: Notre Dame cathedral on the center of the Ile-de-la-Cite.

The Louvre, where we will spend a good chunk of tomorrow gazing on masterworks, which include the second best portrait in the world, Raphael's Baldasare Castiglione.

The Eiffel Tower reaching up over the Seine.

At the end of our walk we returned to "our neighborhood" for a bite to eat at Le Pré Verre, a fantastic little cafe and wine bar. What you see below is one of the best meals of the trip and the best meal we've had since leaving Figlmüller's in Vienna. This is bistecca alla Parisian in a light, but flavor-packed broth, along with lightly pickled beets and yellow carrots on the side and smoky mashed potatoes. The bread was so beautiful and delicious it deserved its own photo, below. Now we are preparing to head to bed in a "food coma," but boy, was it worth it!! Oh, and I forgot to mention, homemade chocolate truffle and caramel ice cream for dessert. Ooooh lala!

Views of Cologne

We arrived in Cologne very early on the morning of July 5, so early that we couldn't officially check-in into our hotel for hours, so my first memories of Cologne are of wet pavement, just cleaned, the welcome smell of hot coffee and rows and stacks of freshly baked pastries. We stopped at one of these shops in a square near our hotel and and I had my first German sweet roll--about 5 inches across and delicious! Below is the bakery in question.

(What I loved about this display was the sheer number of pastries and the way they were carefully stacked or neatly aligned in rows. Yes! Those are giant filled doughnuts in the middle.)

***

We used Cologne as a "home base" from which to reach nearby Bonn, where Pixar's new art exhibition opened that evening. (More on that in another post) The hour-long train ride between cities was sometimes a drag, but the beauty of Cologne more than made up for it. Our hotel was again perfectly placed facing (this time the side of) the city's cathedral and so we couldn't avoid it, even if we wanted to. Below are some shots of this HUGE and magnificent structure, which holds two landmark works of medieval art--the Gero Crucifix and the Shrine of the Magi. Unfortunately, due to the low-lighting and massive amounts of gold on both, they were impossible to photograph, but that's what postcards are for!

Me in front of the south transept entrance, which used to be the main entrance to the church before it was finished in the 19th C.

View from our breakfast table on July 6th. You can see from this photo how difficult it is to get the enormous facade of this building into a single shot. It's simply too tall, too wide and in a space that hugs it too closely to get the whole thing from ground level. Below a shot from right in front.

I found this facade endlessly fascinating to look at with its layer upon layer of decoration.

View down the 142 foot tall nave. Whether the sun was behind a cloud or not dramatically impacted these images, as you can see.

 

View of the upper portion of the choir.

View into the transept vaulting with sun blasting through the glass.

***

Cologne has an "old town" that was rebuilt after WWII in an old, that is, medieval style. This area is beautiful, shady and has several pubs and places to eat. On our only night in Cologne, which happened to be our last night in the region, we dined at a riverside pub in this very area. The city hall is also located near here. Below is a photo of Dave in front of it.

As a side note, the temperatures dropped noticeably from Vienna (90) to Cologne (75) and again when we headed to Aachen on July 8. The clouds race overhead and the weather changes are rapid and dramatic--with rain one minute and literally warming sun 10 minutes later. It's really something to behold and it has followed us to Brussels where we spend the night tonight.

Dave in front of Cologne's city hall.

"Old Town" in Cologne. The Rhine is to Dave's back as he took this photo. We had dinner our last night at a pub just our of the photo to the far left.