Maxine took a special tour of the reception rooms at the Hotel de Ville. This is the Paris City Hall but, its much more elaborate than the usual city hall in a U.S. city.
An excuse to stay up all night sponsored by the City of Paris. We don't actually understand French modern art. Or maybe we don't understand anyone's modern art... One night a year the city of Paris runs the event called Nuit Blanche, which I (Tom) attended 12 years ago and we've been looking forward to since before we arrived. We accept that we don't "get it". But, that's ok. It's fun. And one of the areas where they were concentrating this year was less than a mile away. But, first, lunch. We picked up sandwiches and macarons at what had been one of our favorite bakeries in 2006 when we lived down the street. With the weather remaining great, we had a picnic in Luxembourg Gardens. Now, Nuit Blanche... Nothing says French Art like outdoor roller ball Or tall women posing next to statues of DeGaulle Or soccer under black light in glow-in-the-dark, neon rain jackets. But, Paris at...
We moved from Los Angeles to Portland just over 2 years ago. We'd been coming to Portland for 20 years and always felt a strong bond with the place. It simply has a LOT of the things we value in where we live (I won't enumerate them here -- this blog is about Paris). During our time (this time) in Paris we kept noticing ways in which Paris and Portland were alike or at least similar to us. Here's the list we came up with: 1. Guys with man buns 2. People are polite: "no after you" 3. Both cities are food oriented 4. Geographically, everything is close both in distance and transit times 5. Similar weather -- not a good thing! 6. Liberal/progressive 7. Both are among the most attractive cities we know. With Paris, it's from the hand of man -- buildings, architecture, public spaces. With Portland, it's the setting -- green spaces, the trees. 8. Both cities have an anti car attitude 9. Guys can wear scarves and not feel silly 10. ...
This weekend marked the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Lots of ceremonies acknowledging it. Four years ago, we attended Armistice Day observances at the Arc de Triomphe, but that was just a short walk from the old apartment. This time we watched on TV -- and most certainly saw more of it. Although we'd have preferred that French television show captions identifying people so we'd know who they are. On Saturday night, Macron held a state dinner for the heads of state who were attending -- somewhere between 60 and 80 of them. It was at the Musee d'Orsay and, from looking at Google Maps, I figure that Trump, Macron, Merkel, Putin and etc. were eating dinner 600 meters from us. We tried to be tourists and were stopped 2 blocks from the museum by police who not only didn't want us to cross their line, they wanted us to just move on. And, late in the evening when I took Emmy for a walk, we talked to the policeman who was guarding...
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