The Wine of Solitude

The Wine of Solitude, published in 1935,
translated into English by Sandra Smith in 2011,

The Wine of Solitude is a sad sort of book, and although it ends on a note of hope that feeling of sadness remains, because we know author Irene Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz, and it’s all the more poignant since she based the story of Hélène Karol on her own lonely, unhappy childhood, and her troubled relationship with her mother.  

Hélène lives in the Ukraine, with Boris, her passionate, distant father, Bella, her beautiful, uncaring mother, and Mademoiselle Rose, her French governess, who is the only person to love the child. Bored Bella has other interests. With her claw-like nails and her thin, red mouth (like a line of blood), she dreams of Paris, where she can be alone and free.

Looking after the house and her child filled her with horror. She was only happy in a hotel, in a room, with a bed and a trunk, in Paris […]

To hold a man tightly in her arms when she didn’t even know his name, or where he came from, a man she would never see again, that and that alone gave her the sharp thrill of pleasure she desired.         

Hélène also dreams of being free in Paris – free to be a normal child, untrammelled by the restrictions of her oppressive middle-class environment and her unhappy home.

Her penniless mother married her Jewish father because she knew he would make money. And so he does – though whether from his business interests or his gambling gains it’s hard to tell. For years he’s on a roll. He makes millions. The family move to St Petersburg, get caught up in WWI and the Revolution, escape to Finland, and move to Paris. Life is a mad whirligig of dinners, dances and parties. Boris Karol decks his wife with expensive jewellery and fabulous frocks, but somehow there is a sense of impermanence, and they have no real friends, just a circle of hangers-on.

Irene Nemiroskvy

Then there’s Max, Bella’s lover, 15 years her junior, living the good life on Karol money. And what of Hélène, who loves her father and hates her mother, but is neglected by both? Friendless, she stands apart from the world, watching and listening. In Russia she begins to write about what she sees and hears, which provokes a terrible row with her mother. In Finland she falls in love, a brief, tender episode.

And in Paris she sets out to make Max falls in love with her. As she changes from child to woman she exults in her power, but never softens her hatred for him and her mother. Even so, she becomes fascinated by him. At this point it would have been all too easy to let Hélène pay her mother back for all the years of cruelty and neglect by marrying Max. But Nemirovsky is far too good a writer for that, and in a stroke of sheer genius she allows Hélène to exact a far more terrible revenge by rejecting Max and dismissing him from their lives.

Bella is a monster, obsessed with keeping her youth and her looks, her life ruled by diets and beauty treatments. She needs money (and plenty of it) but I don’t think she needs love. She’s driven by lust rather than love – as long as she has a young lover she feels young and alive, like some kind of evil fairy from a folk tale, sucking the life out of her lovers so she can extend her own her own youth. Her husband adores her, and will admit no faults: if he does, his world will come crashing down. He has no eyes for anyone else, not even his daughter. He’s as disinterested in her as Bella is.

According to the blurb on the back, the book has been been described as an end-of-innocence story, but I’m not sure I agree. Hélène is never under any illusions about the adults in her life. What she lacks is self-knowledge. But gradually she becomes painfully aware that she has inherited character traits from the mother she hates, as well as the father she adores.

By the end of the novel she is able to walks out of her old life and into the new, head held high, unafraid, because she is young and full of hope, for the future, and the difficulties of her odd childhood have strengthened her and made her what she is.

But the final sentence stays in the mind, because it must have seemed so uplifting when it was first published in 1935, and no-one knew of the horrors that lay ahead:

She stood up and at that very moment the clouds parted , between the pillars of the Arc de Triomphe, blue sky appeared to light her way.

This is another contribution for Paris in July and the French Bingo Reading Challenge 2015 for Square E2 (Translated from the French)

                                                                       

Snapshots of Paris...

I've been looking through my old holiday photos and, since I'm on a 'virtual' trip for the Paris in July challenge, run by Karen at Book Bath and Tamara at Thyme for Tea, and Dreaming of France over at An Accidental Blog, I thought would post some of my pictures for a Saturday Snapshot, which is hosted by Melinda at West Metro Mummy. So I've dug out some street scenes to show why I love the city.

I love the way Parisians turn the tiniest of
balconies  into lush, green, hanging gardens...


And the pride they have in keeping their city clean -
especially this chap, sweeping the steps with an
old-fashioned besom, like a witch's broom.

 And they have wonderfully decorative street lamps, 

where the top....

...and the bottom are works of art, 

so they are beautiful and functional.

 And there are buskers who play proper music (rather 

than strumming three chords on a guitar and singing

out of tune Dylan numbers. I enjoyed this harpist...

...

...and this jazz quartet...

 ...and this trio taking a well earned break - I'll be it was

hard work moving the piano around!

 And I adore the pavement cafes where you can sit and 

watch the world go by as you sip your tea or coffee...

 Or browse around a market... this is the Bird
 Market, next to the Flower Market.

 And you stumble across unexpected little parks and

squares, with the most beautiful planting arrangements, 

and fountains, and statues, and benches.

 And there are tiny roads 

and hidden alleys and it's 

all quite, quite wonderful.

Hemingway Remembers Paris

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

These words, written by Ernest Hemingway to a friend in 1950, appear at the start of A Moveable Feast, which was completed in 1960, but tells of the time he lived in Paris with his first wife, Hadley, between 1921 and 1926.

His memories of that period are captured in 20 short essays: each stands alone, and there is no overall storyline or theme, beyond that of the city itself, but this slender book conjures an image of Paris that is almost tangible. The smells, tastes, sights and sounds of Paris spring off the pages, and the people breathe again as they laugh and love and quarrel and drink and smoke and work and dream. All human life is here: raffish Bohemian artists, avante garde writers and poets, drunks, bartenders, fishermen, street cleaners, booksellers, waiters...

There are glimpses of those who later became well known, alongside others who were already famous. There is Gertude Stein looking, says Hemingway, like a peasant woman rather than the Roman emperor she later resembled; James Joyce, who drank sherry, not  wine, and kindly Sylvia Beach from Shakespeare and Company, who ran a lending library for ex-pats, and provided a refuge when they needed it. Hemingway recounts his friendship with Scott and Zelda Fitgerald, locked into their mutually destructive relationship – and paints a distinctly unsympathetic portrait of Zelda, who I had always thought of as something of a victim. He is far kinder in his portrayal of Ezra Pound, who comes across as being nicer and gentler than I imagined, but my perception of the poet is coloured by his later espousal of Nazism in Italy, and his somewhat irregular domestic arrangements.

And you see the young author learning his craft as a writer, trying to form one true sentence that will carry his story forward. Sometimes words pour out of him, at others he struggles to find the language that expresses his thoughts. Writing about writing he says:

The blue-backed notebooks, the two pencils and the pencil sharpener (a pocket knife was too wasteful), the marble-topped tables, the smell of early morning, sweeping out and mopping, and luck were all you needed. For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit’s foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbit’s foot long ago an the bones and the sinews were polished by wear. The claws scratched in the lining of your pocket and you knew your luck was still there.

Some days it went so well that you could make the country so that you could walk into it through the timber to come into it through the timber to come out into the clearing and work up onto the high ground and see the hills beyond the arm of the lake.

He spends a lot of time hungry, because he and Hadley have very little cash, but he believes lack of food sharpens his perceptions (I have to say I found this rather disturbing). And when he does have money he seems to spend it on food and drink for himself, with never a though for Hadley and their baby son.

Ernest Hemingway in 1918, three
years before he went to Paris.

The book provided source material for Paula McLain, who gave a voice to Hadley in her excellent novel, ‘The Paris Wife’, where Hemingway is charming and charismatic, but a bit of a sod. ‘A Moveavle Feast’ does nothing to dispel that view.

To some extent I think Hemingway has been overshadowed by his own myth – all that machismo stuff about bull fighting, and hunting, and fishing. I always forget how good a writer he was, and it was at this point in his life that he himself realised he really could write, and he gave up regular work as a journalist (although he still did odd articles from time to time) and moved to Paris, determined to write fiction.

In many ways it’s a magical time, but it ends with the appearance of another woman.  Hemingway makes no excuses for what happens – although he seems to put the blame on that other woman, who became his second wife. But he is nostalgic for the past, and for Hadley. “I wish had died before I ever loved anyone but her,” he says. He finishes as he starts, with a tribute to the city.

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs to that of any other. We always returned to it no matter ho we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this was how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.

I Love Paris... A Guide to Paris that's Older than Me!

I love Paris, and my mother and I have visited almost every year since my father died but she is no longer up to the journey, so this summer I’m staying in England. But I can still have a virtual trip, thanks to Karen who runs the Book Bath blog and Tamara over at Thyme forTea, who are once again organising their annual visit to La Belle Française by hosting Paris in July, so I can enjoy all things French without setting foot on the Continent. There’s all ready a whole host of participants who have written about their holidays in Paris, as well as posting pieces about Parisian history, books, music and food. So I hope no-one will mind me joining in at this late stage: to be honest, I’d forgotten all about it, otherwise I would have saved my recent review of Maigret novels and included that.

Anyway, I thought I’d tell you about The Paris We Love, which belonged to Mum, but when she moved she didn’t have room for all her books so she gave this to me, and I was really pleased, because I’ve always loved it.  Published by the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Ltd in 1950 (it’s older than I am), it is jam-packed with fascinating details, and crammed with maps and illustrations – most of them in colour. It must have been quite something when it was new, because paper rationing only ended in 1949, the year before this was published, and there had been stringent guidelines about the way books were printed, with recommendations about print size, margins and blank space. Pictures, which took up precious room, all but disappeared.

The Paris We Love was printed in France (perhaps the French publishing industry had survived the war in better shape) and edited by Doré Ogrizek, with a foreword, or introduction, from playwright, artist and film-maker Jean Cocteau, who urges us to cherish the past. He warns that it is a tragedy to destroy places that witnessed famous deeds, events and pageants ‘from whose ghosts the spirit of the city is created’. But goes on to stress: “It s true that the pick-axe can never quite vanquish these ghosts, for, if their haunts disappear, they will seek them, and will enwrap our own spirits in enchanted mist.”

Silly though it sounds, I love everything about this book, and I can pick it up over and over again, browsing through a different section each time – there are chapters on the various areas of Paris, as well as others on the city’s history, night life, bridges, food and artists. And every time I look I learn something new. Not only does each area of Paris have its own unique atmosphere, but each chapter has its own unique style, for each is written and illustrated by a different author and artist.

It’s part travelogue, part history book, and part cultural reference guide. There are stories about the river that dominates the city, the gardens, the buildings, squares and streets. Above all, there are tales of people. Here you’ll find stories about saints and sinners, kings and revolutionaries, artists and tradesmen, rich and poor. Hard facts rub shoulders with myths and legends, but truth and fiction alike are equally unbelievable – and endlessly fascinating.

One of my favourite pieces is the account of St Geneviève who harnessed the divine power of prayer to repel Attila and his hordes (would that all conflicts could be solved that easily). In addition, ‘miracles occurred wherever she set foot’ which must, I think, have been rather uncomfortable for her, and made every day life more than a little difficult. I was reminded of poor old King Midas who found that turning everything to gold had its disadvantages.

And what about Monsieur de Jussieu, the naturalist who brought a young cedar of Lebanon back to the Jardin des Plantes, keeping it in his hat, and ensuring its survival by giving it his water ration. Or Louis VI who died of grief after his son died from injuries sustained when his horse shied, scared by a herd of pigs in the street.

Then there’s the fantastic tale of the Petit Pont (that’s the Little Bridge (even my failed ‘O’ Level French is up to translating that) destroyed 16 times, most amazingly of all in the 18th century, when a woman fulfilling a vow put a lighted torch in a wooden bowl and left it to float on the Seine, where it set light to a hay barge, which was cut adrift by the frightened sailors and hit the bridge...

It doesn’t cover anything in great detail, which is hardly surprising when you consider it spans some 2,000 years, but it’s a treasure trove of odd snippets of information, a kind of taster that makes you want to find out more. And it’s great fun to read bits that relate to places you know, and to see if things have altered. Obviously, the history still holds good, and the myths and legends are like fairy tales, which never lose their appeal. However, surprisingly, a lot of the city remains just as it was 60 years ago – indeed, the central area can’t have changed all that much since it was laid out by Haussmann in the 19th Century, and modern development seems to have taken place on the outskirts. 

Sadly, it’s a bit chunky to tote around when sight-seeing, but it’s as good as any modern guide book (actually, I think it’s better, but my nearest and dearest say I have odd taste in books) and the authors of the various chapters offer a very personal view of the city. For example, Marcel Brio, writing about the Eiffel Tower, describes it as a 'great, hollow pyramid... a series of giant ladders for spiders with a craze for climbing and adds that it provides ‘a pleasant balcony for foreigners and provincials who want to combine dizziness with a ‘monumental’ view of Paris’. He has quite a lot more to say on the subject of the iconic tower, but is obviously not a fan.

For the final word I’ll return to Jean Cocteau, who says: “Paris yields herself in discovery as an attic beloved in our childhood gave up its secrets.” And that is what this book will do – help you discover the secrets of Paris, and reveal the city’s hidden past. All illustrations to this post are taken from the book.

Edited, Monday, July 8, 2013: Just discovered the lovely Dreaming of France meme, hosted by Paulita over at An Accidental Blog, so I'm joining in that as well! 

A Blooming Wonderful Flower Market

The weather is still thoroughly depressing, although we’ve had a bit of  blue sky and sunshine today. It rained last night, and has been slightly warmer, so much of the ice and snow has melted. Snow is sliding off roofs with a sort of whooshing noise; water is dripping, splishing and splashing from trees, bridges and guttering, and the pavements are awash with puddles and pools and rivulets of water spreading between lumps of dirty, rock hard ice which are still adhering to the ground, seemingly no smaller or softer than they were yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. There is water, water everywhere, and if the temperature drops overnight then roads and paths will be like a skating rink tomorrow morning.  

  I have lots of pictures of the snow, which looks very pretty, but I am so fed up with it, I thought that for this week’s Saturday Snapshot I would cheer myself up by posting some photos I took in Paris last May, on a lovely, hot, sunny day when it was so nice we wandered around without coats or jackets.

These were all taken in Le Marché aux Fleurs (the Flower Market), at Place Louis-Lépine, near Notre Dame and La Conciergerie, on the Île de la Cité. It’s one of my favourite places in Paris, and is absolutely fabulous, a riot of colour and perfume, guaranteed to lift your spirits if you’re feeling down (though I’m sure I don’t  know how anyone could ever feel down on a trip to Paris). 

It really is heavenly. You can smell the flowers before you see them – the fragrance hits you as you step out of the metro at Cité. Flowers, trees and shrubs are banked up high inside and outside the metal pavilions that have been there since 1808, and you find yourself walking through long, narrow alleys of flowers which overwhelm your senses. Along the Quai de la Corse, on the bank of the Seine, there are more stalls housed in metal huts which are surrounded by pots of flowers stacked up the walls and spilling out onto the pavement.

I suppose it's like a garden centre really, because these are living plants for gardens and homes, rather than cut flowers, and there are all kinds of beautiful garden ornaments hanging from walls, hanging from the glass roof, and displayed on shelves. If I had a fortune I could happily spend a large part of it here, but I don’t, so every time I visit I buy a packet of herbes de Provence, and when I cook with them it’s like having a little bit of French sunshine in my kitchen, and I can close my eyes, breathe in the aroma, and imagine the sights, sounds and smells of the Flower Market.

The market is open every day, and on Sundays the Marché aux Oiseaux, or Bird Market, takes place alongside it, with all kinds of birds, from tiny finches to large parrots, all squawking and cheeping and twittering and singing, and as you walk from the Metro taking great gulps of flowery air you hear all this birdsong. And, despite the name, you’ll see many other small creatures here - fish, rabbits, gerbils, rats and so on. I don’t know about you, but I always have problems with the idea of animals in cages. However, I would have to say that whenever I’ve walked round the market the creatures all looked happy and well cared for.

One of the things I love about both these markets is people watching. There are smartly dressed, elegant women, workmen in their overalls, scruffy teenagers, and pensioners leaning on sticks, peering around and walking very carefully, so they don’t trip over the plants. There are experts who know about plants and birds, and novices who know nothing but are willing to learn. There are people buying and people like me, just looking. And everywhere are people shouting, waving their arms about, shrugging their shoulders very theatrically, and pulling faces in that expressive way the French have, so I like to think customers are haggling with proprietors in a bid to talk the price down and get a better deal.

Anyway, if you’re planning a holiday in Paris, and you’ve never been to the Flower Market, do go, because it will make you happy - it makes me happy just thinking about it. And when you’ve finished looking round it’s only a short walk to the Left Bank, and the Île Saint-Louis. Iconic book shop Shakespeare and Company is just down the road, and there are masses of cafes in the area where you can sit outside and watch the world go by as you eat your lunch.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce at http://athomewithbooks.net/ where you can see photos from other participants all over the world.

Good Morning, Midnight

I stayed there, staring at myself in the glass. What do I want to cry about? … On the contrary, it's when I am quite sane this like this, when I have had a couple of extra drinks and am quite sane, that I realise how lucky I am. Saved, rescued, fished-up, half-drowned, out of the deep, dark river, dry clothes, hair shampooed and set. Nobody would know I had ever been in it. Except, of course, that there always remains something. Yes, there always remains something. … Never mind, here I am, sane and dry, with my place to hide in. What more do I want? … I'm a bit of an automaton, but sane, surely – dry, cold and sane. Now I have forgotten about dark streets, dark rivers, the pain, the struggle, the drowning … Mind you, I'm not talking about the struggle when you are strong and a good swimmer and there are willing and eager friends on the bank waiting to pull you out at the first sign of distress. I mean the real thing. You jump in with no willing and eager friends around, and when you sink you sink to the accompaniment of loud laughter.

The cover of my Penguin edition shows
a detail from The Girl with a Tattered Glove
 by William Nicholson, which has just
the right note of sadness.

Well, today I'm still in Paris, but I've abandoned the wealthy, sparkling world of Nancy Mitford for the dark, shabby streets of Jean Rhys. The world she describes in Good Morning, Midnight, couldn't be more different, and her characters scratch a living as best they can. Sasha is as much seduced by the city as Grace, but any dreams of love she ever had have long since been smashed. There's a rawness and intensity here that is lacking in 'The Blessing', and somehow, despite everything that happens to her, Sasha is honest in way that Grace isn't. And the way the novels are written is very different as well.

I can still remember how knocked out I was when I first read 'Wide Sargasso Sea' - it was a whole new way of looking at a novel, and rethinking the way I saw heroes and villains. And I was just as knocked out by 'Good Morning, Midnight'.

It's 1936 and Sasha, as she calls herself, has returned to Paris where she lived for many years. As she wanders the city fragments of her past come to light: her child, a white, silent baby boy, lying dead in the hospital with a ticket tied round his wrist before ever she leaves the nursing home; her husband moving out of her life on a train; the jobs which didn't work out and the men who abandoned her.

Then there are the rooms where she has lived, in Holland, Brussels, Paris and London. The locations may change, but the rooms are always the same: small, riddled with bugs, in cheap buildings, in poor streets. She dreams of a room, a nice room, a nice light room, a beautiful room, a beautiful room with a bath, but it never happens. Lonely and desolate, she is unable to cope with the practicalities of everyday life, and gets by with the aid of drink and sleeping pills. And, like a child avoiding the cracks in the pavement she has an armoury of charms and rituals to protect her from the world – all will be well if she can only avoid certain streets, certain cafes, certain bars.

The Medici Fountain in the Jardin du
Luxembourg, where Sasha stands and
watches the fish.

There are times when a certain jaunty optimism surfaces. She will drink to a Miracle, she will have a new hair-do, buy a new hat, and tomorrow she will be pretty and happy again and everything will be all right, but you know there can be no happy ending here. Sasha appears vulnerable, a perpetual victim, easy prey for the young gigolo, or the young Russian and his painter friend.

However, she has tremendous self-knowledge. She knows exactly who and what she is, and she is a surprisingly good judge of character. Cynical and disillusioned, she can spot a crook or a conman a mile off, but is prepared to let herself be taken in – I think she craves some kind of human contact, however bad the experience and its consequences may be.

From the moment she attaches herself to Enno (who marries and leaves her) because she wants to escape her life in London, she seems to make her own decisions. Circumstances may be against her, and her choices may be limited, but nobody forces her, and she puts herself in situations where the outcome is inevitable. Knowing she cannot change the past, she has an almost fatalistic acceptance of the present. This happened and that happened, she says. And it's a refrain that sounds throughout the novel, with slight variations along the way. Here this happened, here that happened, she tells us, remembering this, remembering that. Above all Sasha, who was once Sophie, who was once Sophia, realises the absurdity of human life, and how droll it can be.

Good Morning, Midnight (the title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem) ends on a slightly sinister, but is not as depressing or bleak as it sounds. There are moments of joy (though not many admittedly) and touches of humour that can see, almost macabre. And whatever course Sasha's life has taken, she has lived it to the full, unlike her unknown family who follow a clichéd existence back in England.

The novel is beautifully written, in a kind of stream of consciousness first tense, where past and present merge and nothing is clear cut. I suspect that when it was first published in 1939 many people must have found it shocking in form and content. Never an easy read, nevertheless, it's livelier and more personal than Viginia Woolf, and it's tempting to see Sasha as a version of Rhys herself for here, as in so much of her work, her own turbulent life and feelings of alienation seem to be reflected. At any rate, in Sasha she has created a flawed woman who is set on a crash course to disaster, while we stand helplessly by and watch.

Jean Rhys,

A Whirlwind Weekend in Paris

Weekend in Paris, by Robyn Sisman, may not be great literature, and it may be fluffy, but it is great fun, very enjoyable and, best of all, it's about Paris! And therein lies its strength, because it really does conjure up the atmosphere of the city, leaving you with a kaleidoscope of images and impressions that make you yearn to be there, sipping coffee in a pavement cafe, or strolling along the banks of the Seine. And that's why I've chosen this book as part of my Paris in July 'trip' for the challenge being hosted by Karen from BookBath and Tamara from Thyme For Tea.

On the day she is due to fly to Paris on a business trip with her boss, sensible, cautious Molly Clearwater walks out when he calls her a stupid secretary and, on the spur of the moment, buys a ticket for the next train to Paris. Fortunately she has her suitcase, passport and Euros, as well as Bertie the Badger (her childhood cuddly toy) – and the computer disc containing the vital information her boss needs for his presentation at a medical conference. But she has no idea where she will stay, and her knowledge of Paris is gleaned from writers like Nancy Mitford and George Orwell.

Rescued by an extrovert, rollerblading Australian girl, Molly sets off on a whirlwind weekend in Paris which will change her outlook on life for ever. She has a night out at a club on a boat on the Seine; zooms around the city on the back of a scooter driven by a dashing French art student, with whom, of course, she falls in love, and helps Alicia the Australian track down her stolen rollerblades. Meanwhile, her boss is trying to track her down to recover his missing disc, and there's a strange man who seems to pop up everywhere she goes. Things get even more complicated when Molly's over-protective, hippy-ish, gardening mother turns up and is introduced to the art student's wealthy sophisticated father.

As you can see from this, the plot romps along at a fast and furious pace, but it's not a conventional romance, and I rather liked the ending, which was not quite what I was expecting. Molly herself is a very engaging heroine, and the novel is not badly written, but it's the descriptions of Paris which really bring it to to life. There's an unforgettable view of Notre Dame floating on the water, a glimpse of hidden streets of Montmartre well off the usual tourist trail, the Eiffel Tower seen in the early the early morning, and a waiter dusting wicker chairs with a flick of his cloth as he sets them out for the day ahead.

There's a wonderful account of St Sulpice, with its Italianate colonnades and arches, and the ornate fountain with its sculpted stone lions in the square outside the church. And Sisman really brings the Jardin du Luxembourg to life as she writes about men playing boules, a girl on a pony and boys sailing their boats on the big central pool. There are people strolling, playing chess, and reading books, and even a woman doing her t'ai chi exercises, as well as the statues, the palms, the palace and the gravel paths. The gardens are one of my favourite spots in Paris, so perhaps I'm biased, but I think Susman captured the spirit of the place.

Anyway, if you want a nice, easy, feel-good read, set in Paris, then read this – preferably whilst eating a large style of gateau, or a croissant with butter and apricot jam, with a glass of wine or cup of freshly made black coffee!

Parisian Pictures Take Two!

This week's Saturday Snapshots don't need many words, because they're a collection of some of my favourite views of Paris, taken over the last two or three years. My parents were very fond of the city, and planned to celebrate their Diamond Wedding Anniversary there, but sadly Dad died a few months before their special holiday. Since then Mum and I go to Paris for a few days each May.  We have a wonderful time wandering around, and eating French bread and cheese, with huge bags of fresh fruit (the cherries are delicious), and I've taken lots of photographs, which I've been looking at because the weather is so awful, and they cheered me up. So here is a selection of some snaps, as a kind of postscript to the pictures of the Luxemburg Gardens which I posted on my return from our holiday. For more Saturday Snapshots see  Alice's blog http://athomewithbooks.net/

If no-one minds, I'm also posting this for the Paris in July challenge hosted by Karen from BookBath and Tamara from Thyme For Tea. 

The Eiffel Tower, designed and built by engineer Gustave Eiffel to provide the main entrance for the World's Fair in 1889, dominates the city and is incredibly beautiful.

Flowers on a market stall, stacked sideways on to make a wall of blooms.

Bread on another market stall. I love French bread, and the bakers and supermarkets bake twice a day, and you see men cycling home from work, clutching their fresh baguettes as they pedal furiously along the streets.

A boat on the Seine - I couldn't resist taking a picture, because the name is my surname!

YellowIrises in the Jardin Plantes. I love the colours.

More food - French food always looks so mouth-wateringly good.

My mother and I sat in this beautiful courtyard at the Mosque de Paris and drank sweet tea, in the shade of a fig tree, while the birds sang, and we watched men smoking with hookahs, like the Caterpillar in Alice, but I didn't like to take their photo, so I waited until they had gone!

The Flower Market, in the shadow of Notre Dame, on the Ile de la Cite, is one of the most wonderful spots in Paris - you can smell the flowers before you see them. It's a riot of colour and perfume, with all kinds of garden ornaments hanging from the roof and walls.

Notre Dame, perched on the edge of the Ile de la Cite, looks like a ship sailing along the river when photographed from the smaller, quieter Ile de St Louis.

Houseboats moored up on the River Seine.

The French enjoy exercising alongside the Seine on Sunday mornings, when the road is closed to traffic and everyone, from tiny tots to elderly pensioners, turns out to keep fit. Some do exercises holding on to the railings or trees, but mostly they run, jog, walk (often with their dogs), cycle or roller-skate. I think this is such a good idea and it looks such fun, and is very sociable because whole families and groups of friends trot along together, then they all go off for their lunch. It's such a fantastic idea to encourage people to exercise - I wish British towns would do the same. 

Shakespeare and Company, the iconic book shop, is not to be missed. You can browse inside for hours, even if you don't buy anything, and soak up the atmosphere.