Fragonard
Until January 13th 2008
The light-hearted, playful paintings of Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) provide some of the most enduring images of France's ancien régime. His late-rococo style seemed peculiarly suited to the spirit of the times, and his bold brushstrokes and liberated technique set the stage for the Impressionists to come. The
Musée Jacquemart-André, one of Paris's most appealing private collections (and itself a lavish 19th-century palace), has gathered around 100 of the painter's works, some never before displayed in Europe.
Musée Jacquemart-André, 158 boulevard Haussman. Tel: +33 (0)1.45.62.11.59. Open: daily, 10am-6pm. Metro: Saint-Augustin or Miromesnil. See also the museum's
website.
From Economist.com
Labels: France, Paris, Travel
What eyes colors will your baby have?
Nothing to do with France but this link is so cool, I wanted to share it with you and since I just had a baby, I was interested:
http://museum.thetech.org/ugenetics/eyeCalc/eyecalculator.htmlThis allows you to estimate what colors your futur baby or your newborn will have? try it, it is fun.
Labels: baby
I Love Touring Paris - The Fourth Arrondissement
The 4th arrondissement located on the Right Bank of the Seine River is one of the smallest in Paris at slightly over 0.6 square miles (1.6 square kilometers). Its population is about thirty thousand but the district provides more than forty thousand jobs. The Ile de la Cité (Cité Island) was already inhabited in the First Century B.C. by a Gallic tribe known as the Parisii who gave their name to the city. Our first stop is world–renown, tasty, not very high in calories, and won’t cost you a lot of money. It’s on the magnificent Ile St-Louis one of the two Parisian islands in the Seine.
Berthillon makes great ice cream and has since 1954. It believes in natural ingredients and flavorings and uses no preservatives or any of that junk. It is usually closed during the last two weeks of August.
Centre Georges Pompidou (Georges Pompidou Centre), often called Beaubourg was built in 1971–1977 near Les Halles (the Halles Market) and the Marais. It contains a library, the Musée National d'Art Moderne (National Modern Art Museum), a center for music and acoustic research, and an industrial design center. You either love the building or you hate it because of its very distinct (ugly) architecture with pipes on the outside. Even if you can’t stand this building you may enjoy the art museum with it collection of painters including Kandinsky, Matisse, Miró, and Picasso.
One can only imagine how hard it is to run the city of Paris. Maybe that’s why its Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) has been in the same Fourth Arrondissement location since the mid-Fourteenth Century. The present French Renaissance structure was rebuilt in the 1870s and is said to be inspired by castles in the Loire Valley. Its site was a well-known gathering place, in particular for public executions. The local specialty was burning heretics at the stake.
In the early Sixteenth Century King Francis I decided rebuild Paris’s city hall. At that time Paris was the largest city in Europe and the entire Christian world. Building the Renaissance city hall worthy of Paris took about a century. During the French Revolution the city hall lived up to its site’s history; a representative of the ancien regime (pre-Revolutionary government) was killed there the day that the Bastille was stormed. Several years later on this same site the revolutionary leader Maximilien François Marie Odenthalius Isidore de Robespierre usually called Robespierre was shot in the jaw and his followers were arrested.
Paris’s City Hall played a role in the revolution of 1870 and the Paris Commune of the following year; first it became the revolutionary government headquarters and subsequently was burnt to the ground when surrounded by enemy troops. The rebuilt building has a split personality: its exterior is a copy of the Sixteenth Century Renaissance building but the interior reflects the luxury of the day, the 1880s. Charles de Gaulle spoke from City Hall on that great day of August 25, 1944 when Paris was liberated.
Étienne Marcel, the most important pre-mayor of the city was lynched in 1358 by a crowd which felt that he wanted too much power. And the current mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, the first elected left-wing major of Paris since 1871 was stabbed during a party open to the public. After recovering he converted his private apartments to a nursery for the children of municipal workers. Tell me, do you know of any other City Hall with such a history?
The short Rue des Rosiers in the Marais is somewhat a center of Paris’s Jewish community, the largest in Europe. Jews have been living here for six hundred years when they were expelled from Paris; at that time the Marais was outside the city limits. As often when a street becomes very popular it changes its character and Jewish butcher shops and delicatessens are giving way to upscale fashion houses. Be sure to visit the rue des Francs-Bourgeois and its many fashion stores, one of the rare Paris streets that is open on Sunday.
In the middle of the Twelfth Century, so the story goes, Maurice de Sully, the Archbishop of Paris, unhappy with the present cathedral had it demolished and sketched in the dirt its replacement, Notre Dame de Paris, one of the most beautiful churches in the world. Construction took almost two centuries, and frankly was worth it. This French Gothic church is located on the Île de la Cité and is the seat of the Archbishop of Paris. During the French Revolution, many of its treasures were either destroyed or plundered. The church interior was used as a warehouse for the storage of forage and food. The statues of biblical kings of Judea (thought to be kings of France) were beheaded. Many of these heads were found during a 1977 excavation and are now display in the Musée de Cluny located in the fifth arrondissement. Notre Dame’s organ was been computerized, requiring three local-area networks. If you like touring churches, this district is home to several other historic ones, but if you ask me none of them are in the same league as Notre Dame de Paris.
Of course you don’t want to be in Paris without sampling fine French wine and food. In my article I Love French Wine and Food – An Alsace Pinot Noir I reviewed such a wine and suggested a sample menu: Start with Flammekueche (Tart stuffed with Bacon, Onions, Cream Cheese, and heavy Cream). For your second course savor Coq-au-Riesling (Cock cooked in Riesling wine). And as dessert indulge yourself with Quetschelkueche (Plum Tart). Your Parisian sommelier (wine steward) will be happy to suggest appropriate wines to accompany each course.
Levi Reiss has authored or co-authored ten books on computers and the Internet, but to be honest, he would rather just drink fine French or other wine, accompanied by the right foods. He knows what dieting is, and is glad that for the time being he can eat and drink what he wants, in moderation. He teaches classes in computers at an Ontario French-language community college. His central website is
www.wineinyourdiet.com devoted to the health and nutritional aspects of wine and its place in your weight-loss program. Visit his global wine site
www.theworldwidewine.com and his other websites devoted to Italian wine, Italian travel, and Italian food.
Exchange your home
A great way to travel cheap in Europe (or other destinations) especially with the Euro being so strong is to exchange your house or apartment. There is a nice website where you can post your house for a small fee and exchange with somebody else .
http://www.ihen.com. On this website you can both find houses to exchange but also regular vacation rentals.
Another one, more popular and larger is
http://www.homeexchange.com/.
Labels: europe, home exchange, Travel, vacation rentals
La Provence
For those of you who speak french and who love the region of Provence in France, there is a nice website
www.laprovence.com, that covers the news about this region. There is also plenty of information about real estate there, what to do, where to eat, shows etc. Check it out.
Labels: France, Provence, Travel
A good website for preparing a trip to France
We gave you a nice website on hotels in Paris a copple of posts ago. Here is another website really good for a lot of information on the different regions of France:
http://www.france-voyage.com/en/It gives you a map of France with all its regions, you click on the one you may want to visit ant it gives you very detailed information on the cities, the things to do, places to visit, where to stay etc. it is really well done with nice pictures. A must if you are planning your trip to France.
Labels: France, Travel
I Love Touring Paris - The First Arrondissement by Levi Reiss
The first arrondissement is at the center of Paris on the Seine River's right bank. It includes the western part of Ile de La Cité, one of the two Parisian islands. In ancient times this district was the heart of the Roman city of Lutetia. It occupies less than a square mile (less than two square kilometers) with a declining population of under seventeen thousand. But it employs more than sixty thousand people and attracts many, many tourists. Here are some of the reasons why.
Les Halles became the city's central market, covered in 1183. Read Zola's 1873 novel Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris) for a timeless picture of this unique setting demolished in 1971 and replaced by a huge underground modern shopping center, the Forum des Halles. The world's largest underground transportation station Châtelet-Les-Halles serves a half million train passengers and a quarter million subway passengers daily. Make sure to see the historic Gothic Church of Saint-Eustache where young Louis XIV received communion. This church boasts several Rubens paintings and offers organ concerts in the summer.
The Musée du Louvre (Louvre Museum) greets more than eight million tourists a year, more than any other art museum in the word. It was called the Musée Napoléon in honor of all his war booty; which was eventually returned to the rightful owners. The initial "Castle of the Louvre" was founded in 1190 at the western edge of Paris to defend the city. The oldest standing building was begun in 1535. The Louvre contains almost four hundred thousand objects including twelve thousand paintings. Two of its most famous items are the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. Plan to spend a lot of time in this fabulous museum.
The Sixteenth Century Tuileries Palace was built for Catherine de' Medicis, the widow of Henry II. Louis XIV lived there while waiting for the Palace of Versailles to be built. The Tuileries Palace was later used as a theatre but its gardens remained popular among the local upper crust. Louis XVI and family stayed there under house arrest and the building was stormed during the French Revolution. Subsequently both the revolutionaries and Napoleon used the buildings. Both Joséphine and Marie-Louise had magnificent bedrooms. Unlike the Paris City Hall and portions of the Louvre, the Tuileries Palace was not rebuilt after its destruction in 1871. The Tuileries Garden covers about 63 acres (25 hectares) and includes the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, a contemporary art museum. There is a lot of talk about rebuilding the Palace. The original plans and many photographs are archived, and the Palace furniture and paintings were safely stored prior to its destruction. The cost of rebuilding is estimated at about $400 million (300 million euros) supposedly financed by subscription and not by taxes.
In the meantime why not visit the Palais Royal, former home of Cardinal Richelieu in spite of his vow of poverty. Many other bigwigs lived there over the years. During the French Revolution a guy nicknamed Philippe-Egalité (Equality Phil) became popular for opening the Palais-Royal gardens to all Parisians. His oldest son Louis-Philippe was King of France from 1830 to 1848. An Abbé wrote a little poem about the garden "Dans ce jardin on ne rencontre ni champs, ni prés, ni bois, ni fleurs. Et si l'on y dérègle ses moeurs, au moins on y règle sa montre." ("In this garden one encounters neither fields nor woods nor flowers. And, if one upsets one's morality, at least one may re-set one's watch.") A nearby café was the rallying point for the taking of the Bastille. Today's Palais Royale is the center of many government offices and some building of the Bibliothèque Nationale (Nationale Library) most of which have been relocated to less interesting parts of town.
The Comédie-Française or Théâtre Français is France's only state theater and one of the few with a permanent troupe. It is often considered the home of Molière but in fact he died before it was built. During the French Revolution it was closed and the actors were imprisoned. The Comédie-Française is the current resting place of the heart of Francois-Marie Arouet, more commonly known as Voltaire.
For a break from so much history visit Paris's second-oldest department store La Samaritaine on the banks of the Seine River. By the way, its name comes from a hydraulic pump with a guilded sculpture of the Good Samaritan located near the Pont Neuf (New Bridge), Paris's oldest bridge. The store was closed for safety reasons in 2005 and may not yet have reopened. The plans are to make it more upscale upon reopening.
If you feel like splurging consider the Hôtel Ritz, which was originally built as a private home in the early Eighteenth Century. The word ritzy comes from this hotel and similar lodgings in London and Madrid. A part owner was the world-famous chef Auguste Escoffier who revolutionized French cuisine and once trained Ho Chi Minh as a pastry chef. Famous guests include Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marcel Proust, Charlie Chaplin, and Coco Chanel, who lived there for over thirty years. This hotel was the last stop for Dodi Al-Fayed, son of its owner, and Diana, Princess of Wales before their tragic demise in August, 1997.
Of course you don't want to be in Paris without sampling fine French wine and food. In my article I Love French Wine and Food - A White Beaujolais I reviewed such a wine and suggested a sample menu: Start with Cuisses de Grenouilles (Frogs Legs). For your second course savor Quenelles de Brochet (Poached Fish Dumplings). And as dessert indulge yourself with Galettes de Pérouges (Pérouges Pancakes). Your Parisian sommelier (wine steward) will be happy to suggest appropriate wines to accompany each course.
About the Author:
Levi Reiss is the author or co-author of ten computer and Internet books, but to tell the truth, he would rather just drink fine Italian or other wine, accompanied by the right foods. He knows about dieting but now eats and drinks what he wants, in moderation. He teaches classes in computers at an Ontario French-language community college. His new wine, diet, health, and nutrition website
http://www.wineinyourdiet.com/ links to his other sites.
Labels: France, Paris, Travel
