Blogging in Paris

May 1st, – le 1er mai– , is a bank holiday in France –un jour férié–, and traditionally, people offer their family, friends or relatives a sprig of lily of the valley for good luck.
Although the weather was uncertain that day, I went for a walk and took a few photos.

Lily of the valley - muguet

Shops are closed

And on that day, anyone and everyone is allowed to sell lily of the valley on the street.

Selling lily of the valley

Either she just got her sprig, or they are going to offer it to some friends or relatives.

Just got hers!

And here’s some of mine

A visit to Musée Jacquemart-André is always a treat.

A treat because it’s such a beautiful museum, located Boulevard Haussmann. It hosts incredible collections all gathered by patrons of the arts, Edouard André and his wife, Nélie Jacquemart, and a treat, because the museum restaurant offers scrumptious plates and tasty pastries in an incredible setting!

At the moment, it hosts paintings and drawings by Fragonard. I enjoyed the exhibition, although I must admit drawings and etchings are more difficult for me to appreciate than paintings.

Of course, no photographs are allowed in the rooms dedicated to Fragonard, but I took some photos on the way to the exhibition like this gorgeous Tiepolo fresco.

I had a salade au foie gras, decorated with grapes, raspberries, which did not only taste great but also looked wonderfully autumnal.

When we got out, as it was a lovely day, I walked back home, along avenue Montaigne, spotting old fashion designer plates on the pavement, like Jeanne Paquin’s

and walking past the Eiffel Tower to finally get home.

Quite a long enjoyable walk.

I know it’s much too early to be mentioning spring, but on a sunny day, when you see

People feeling that it’s warm enough to sit on a bench

Even tights in this shopwindow are so colourful that they’re just calling for spring!

and old ladies go out for a walk… (I actually missed the appropriate shot here. The car on the right was backing up and she stopped it with her cane! But my camera was too slow to catch it)

At last a nice and sunny day. Not really warm, but what do you expect in February. We haven’t even had real cold yet, but lots of grey, humid, foggy, boring days. A dull winter it is.
I went to Parc Montsouris, one of the parks in southern Paris. Still pretty wintery.

A nice park I had never really been to, with ducks and / or geese. I never quite know which is which!

Paths going up and down, a pool and statues.

And under a big tree, the first crocuses I’ve seen this year

All my photos of Parc Montsouris.

 
On Monday, I went to Opera Garnier where they were performing Mozart’s Idomeneo, a performance which would have been even more enjoyable if we had been properly seated. But this is probably too much to ask in these wonderful-looking theatres. They ARE wonderful to look at, but thoroughly uncomfortable and probably meant for children (size-wise).

Of course, I had taken both my cameras with me and took gazillions of photos with my older camera, as it is better at night. I even started from home pretty early, as I wanted to shoot the lights at Galeries Lafayette and Place Vendôme. So I did, and also took quite a few photos inside the Opera House.
On my way home on the métro, I reviewed my photos and wanting to delete one blurry photo, I managed to erase all the photos I had taken on that day. I still don’t know how I ever did that, but I did. They have all disappeared forever.

I don’t like to give up though, and yesterday, as it wasn’t raining, I went back to the Galeries Lafayette area in the evening and shot photos inside and outside,

Then I walked along rue de la Paix to Place Vendôme. The whole area was just silvery and worth going back to.