poliphilo: (Default)
poliphilo ([personal profile] poliphilo) wrote2007-07-07 01:56 pm

Paris, Rive Gauche





These two were taken from the same seat at a restaurant on the left bank. I think they're my favourites from the whole trip.

[identity profile] karenkay.livejournal.com 2007-07-07 01:28 pm (UTC)(link)
I first went to Paris in 1988 to visit some friends from grad school. I had the month of January off from my teaching job at Cornell, and I spent three weeks of it in Paris.

One of those friends was spending the year in Paris the year I turned 45 (1996), so I went back in the spring for 10 days. (I did the entire trip, including airfare and hotel, for $800.) I went partly to visit my friend, and partly to revisit the architecture. The courtyards, the tall doors with elaborate ironwork hinges and knobs. I just spent a lot of time walking around looking at buildings.

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2007-07-07 02:07 pm (UTC)(link)
I love to just wander round a city, looking to see what's there. We didn't have time to do much of that in Paris, but I've done it a lot in London.

I love Paris in the spring time...

[identity profile] sorenr.livejournal.com 2007-07-08 09:50 am (UTC)(link)
I'm obviously dying with impatience for going to Rome for the first time ever in a few weeks, but I'm equally impatient to go to Paris with Denis in August. I've only been there once (in 2001) since I lived there back in 1997-1998, and there really are times when I miss it still.

Paris just "works" for me; perhaps because it was the first place I lived after moving out from my parents with a single ticket, a suitcase and a grand fortune of 300 pounds. It was my first experience with living in a big city - as well as living on my own with no parental control whatsoever - and Paris was very good to me. I had my local food market, my Louvre season-ticket, my favourite walks... I want to see all that again, and also of course I want to show all of this to Denis who has been to Paris several times but never with somebody who has lived there.

Ville de Lumière, here I come!

Re: I love Paris in the spring time...

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2007-07-08 10:41 am (UTC)(link)
My parents took me to Paris in my early teens- as a reward for passing my "O" levels. I went all round the Louvre and sauntered in the Tuileries and bought nudie magazines from a riverside bouquiniste and that was about it until now.

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2007-07-08 06:40 pm (UTC)(link)
Cheers!

[identity profile] kinderheldin.livejournal.com 2007-07-08 03:58 pm (UTC)(link)
I thought to myself on seeing the first top/one here, wow -- that's great, my favorite so far. Then I read what you wrote at the bottom.

I also like the first Monet house picture -- the blue-green shutters alomts making half the picture one color.

Thank you so much for sharing these impressions with us! I haven't been to Paris yet, but the next time I go to Europe, that's where I'm going. I need to see where Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre and Anais Nin and Hemingway and Joyce traipsed about.

(P.S. A while back in your journal, I thought the black sports-shirt looked really good on you, too -- it's a keeper!) :>

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2007-07-08 06:38 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm glad you like those two. We were rushing about and trying to beat the clock and there wasn't much time to stop and frame artful compositions.

The first- the restaurant shot- struck me as being a bit like a cubist collage. Whereas the one of Monet's garden is definitely fauve.

[identity profile] pondhopper.livejournal.com 2007-07-08 08:25 pm (UTC)(link)
I have not been to Paris in over 30 yearsand am longing to return. The second picture is just about perfect!

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2007-07-08 09:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Thanks.

I took a number of shots, varying the angle and the placing of the figure (I think the woman sussed me out- leastways there's one with her looking directly at the camera) and this, I reckon, is the best.