Skip to main content

June 24

From Vivaldi  to  Vincent (Van Gogh)

THE VIVALDI PART
Rewind  a bit back to Saturday, June 22nd. We had dinner at home and then  at 8:00 took a walk down the Seine to Saint Chapelle. Last time we were there in 2000, it was Christmas week and we froze waiting in line for two hours to see the chapel. This time, we simply stood in line to buy tickets to be treated to a six piece string classical concert in this magnificent setting. 
The concert was Vivaldi...not just Vivaldi but theFour Seasons.....not just the Four Seasons but played spectacularly....not just played well but in a stirring setting.  The last time the music and its venue engendered  such magic was in 1977 seeing the Vienna Boys Choir sing in the 12th century Cathedral in Durham, England.
The lead violin played with the speed and finesse of the finest rendition of the Flight of the Bumblebee. The light was still subtle through the stained glass though the chapel was dark.  The entire audience was mesmerized (well maybe not Steve but he liked it).  And probably for the umpteenth time in the past three weeks I pinched myself to make sure it was all real.

SKIPPING AHEAD TO VAN GOGH (will fill you in on  our Sunday of St. Ouen, jazz and Pierre Cardin on a light news date in the future)
This was the day to see if any of the Paris art had rubbed off on us. Taking our sketchpads and six pencils, we hopped on the Metro, 2 lines, 10 stops total, and arrived at the Academie de Port-Royal for our open studio session. 

I  guess we were hoping for some instruction, encouragement or HELP but instead were squarely in the middle of a studio of artists, a passel of easels and a very thin ballet dancer nude live model and her green turbaned, eyeliner wearing violin playing model partner ( not nude, only barefoot). For the next two hours they together struck poses from simple to elegant to acrobatic, changing poses every few minutes and not leaving much time to get their forms onto paper.  

It was challenging to say the least, and demoralizing  at best if you stole a glance at your neighbor's sketchpad. Most in the studio, with a few strokes of their pencil or charcoal or ink, captured the muscle and proportion of the nude female beautifully. Although I felt like I got the hang of it as we went along, towards the end of the hours Steve was sketching the stool instead.


Needless to say we opted for a great lunch at Yard  instead of a second studio session.  Lunch was lovely, we are eating way too much meat let alone tartare, and the bottle of wine was great.
Food stopping/shopping on the way home for the requisite baguette and the almond croissant treat for tomorrow's breakfast. An evening stroll along the Seine was to be watching a fireworks spectacle but alas, the fallacy of Internet info, and it was not true.  We passed on Berthillon's glaces in the 50degree night air but found instead Village St. Paul, a small warren of streets and shops with a 12th century medieval wall to which we will return another day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

August 3. West, East or Central??? Where the Hell is Vienna?

 West, East or Central??? Where the Hell is Vienna? Aside from the fact that it is approximately three hours and fifteen minutes from Cesky Krumlov, Vienna, it turns out, is technically in Western Europe, even though Austria makes its appearance in Rick Steve's Eastern European book and people who live in Czech, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia are Central European.  In fact, it is almost offensive to call them or their country Eastern European, as that is clearly only for the old Soviet bloc.  We made a few stops along the way, taking the scenic way past a magnificent very long lake, and over beautiful mountains with rolling fields of crop and grain, not quite the Sound of Music Austria, but not too far off. Crossing from Czech to Austria in the EU of today entailed no more than driving past the old vacant border patrol building.  We checked into our hotel, just a couple blocks outside the busy Ringstrasse and next to the Rathaus, and sank into our air conditioned room,...
Post a Comment
Read more

#118 - It’s Sunny and HOT in Paree

Dinner last night was just a ten minute walk, following the Marci school of city touring which says : “run around all day, anywhere you want, take public transit everywhere, but once you are back at your hotel, be it 6 or 7 or even 8pm, just walk close by for dinner”. I always pick the neighborhood to stay in first and then I pick my hotel. I don’t mind running all day, but once the day is done I want to be near lots of good places to eat dinner.  Astier, a bistro in the 11th, qualified on the location and the Good Eats. Again, the food sounded simple, like my beet gaspacho with crunchy veggies. The deep purple was rich looking and the flavors layered and fresh.  Steve started with the pickled herring and I think he was quite surprised when the waiter delivered and LEFT on the table a  quite large glazed terracotta container of herring, a serving spoon and fork, a bowl of small potatoes and a basket of bread.  Then he left. Clearly this was an all-you-can-...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Beer Primer, Brewery to Baths

A Beer Primer, Brewery to Baths In Czech, beer is king. It is the breakfast of champions, the lunchtime  liquid, the afternoon aperitif, the dinner drink and evening bar crawl beverage. There is dark and light and everything in between. You can order normal, at 10% alcohol, or 11 or 12 for a faster buzz. It can be smooth or bitter, yellow, brown or red. It goes with dumplings, and pork knee, and pickled sausages and apple strudel. It fills you up and always makes you need the WC. And so, although we are not beer aficionados, and I am not even a beer fan, we picked Plzen, CZ as the first stop on our 15 day road trip through Eastern Europe (or Central Europe to those who live there according to a Czech acquaintance). It was close to Prague so even if we got lost, the day would not be lost.  The morning's challenges would be getting to the rental car place in town by metro, finding our way back to the apartment in our Skoda, the largest produced Czech car,  and navigating ou...
Post a Comment
Read more