Abroad: Tuileries and environs

I went out twice in Paris in the morning with my medium format cameras.

The first day, Sarah left for her strategically planned visit to the original Chanel store and sent me off on my own.

I crossed the gardens to get the required picture of the Seine with the Eiffel tower in the background, from the Pont de la Concorde.

Then I hustled up the quai to the Pont du Carrousel for a similar treatment with the Île de la Cité.

I should have gone a bridge up for both of these river views,  but I had limited time. However, this was one of several times I had the transcendent feeling of how cool it was to walk as fast and far as I felt like.

Crossed back into the courtyard of the Louvre. If you go between the two colossal lines (This was at 10:30 am) you can get fairly close to the pyramid for that famous transparent view and not get your tripod in anybody's way. I saw several people quizzically look over Supper Club Shorty on top of my Manfrotto, but no one ever said anything.

Right near the museum are an arrangement of palatial garden standard geometrically trimmed hedges. I was initially put off by the green n'entrez pas tape, but then thought it gave it a bit of distinction in a John Pfahl sort of way. I was approached by a young woman who asked me where I was from and told me she was from Crimea.  She was, she said, soliciting funds and petition signatures for a Deaf School in Paris. "I have a deaf nephew," I told her.  I wouldn't be surprised if this was a beggar's scam, but I gave her two Euro. She never said anything about the camera either.

I was really impressed about how much stuff was still blossoming in October that far north, but then, the personnel that it took to maintain these places were usually visible somewhere in the park. They do a really nice job. It was interesting to see the ancient wooden rolling scaffolds to trim those hedges with. Didn't hear one gasoline power tool, either.

  Speaking of the workers who keep the garden neatly trimmed.

I passed this variation of the Farnese Hercules. I felt a sense of inclusion that there was an old man among all the nude sculptures.

Isn't this color bizarre?  It looks to me like infra-red.  But that's what it really looked like.  Again, kudos to those folks working the gardens.  (I moved the chair in the middle of the path)  During the exposure Sarah texted me that she was done and I scurried back to the hotel to hear the story.

The next morning, before they opened, we went past 31 Rue Cambon just to take a picture.

It was an unusually still day (Pinholers always notice the wind). I'm amazed that they keep these giant palms alive this far north, but it's a milder climate than we have in Wisconsin.

A tree I just thought looked French impressionist.

I'll conclude the whole Abroad series with two from Wisconsin to finish the roll.

The cats didn't destroy the house. Spenser was particularly clingy for weeks after we got home.

Sarah's treasures - safely home in the uniquely 31 Rue Cambon boxes - not destined to become cameras anytime soon.

Some with Supper Club Shorty. .27mm pinhole 35mm from 6x6cm frame on Kodak Ektar 100.  The rest with The Evil Cube. .3mm pinhole 6cm from 6x6cm frame on Kodak Portra 400.

Abroad: La Petite France

I only took my medium format cameras and tripod out a couple times while we were abroad.  One of these was in Strasbourg.

Virtually every street on the little island of La Petite France is an iconic historical European city view.

I remember the first time we were in Europe in 1981 practically every vertical surface was plastered with layers of posters of one kind or another. I didn't notice this at all this time except for this closed little shop.

One of those little grocery stores with the produce out on the street.

Florists also have displays on the street.

A particularly quaint and charming shop entrance.

The first photo with Supper Club Shorty. .27mm pinhole 35mm from 6x6cm frame on Kodak Ektar 100.  The rest with The Evil Cube. .3mm pinhole 6cm from 6x6cm frame on Kodak Portra 400.

Abroad: A Room with a View

I took two medium format cameras with me to Europe: The Evil Cube, and Supper Club Shorty - supported by my Bogen/Manfrotto 76B.

I only took them out with me on three occasions, but I used them for photographs of or out the windows of most of the places we stayed.

In Prague, we booked an AirBnB that had been the studio of prominent Czech painter and sculptor Zdenek Sputa, dominated by this great northern skylight.

It was full of artist tools.  He was very multimedia. These scissors were hanging from nails in the window sill.

More art paraphenalia: a few chunks of architectural stone and a frame leaned against the desk.

Sarah channeling the creative vibe.

Another AirBnB in Vienna, right across the street from the Ministry of National Defence and Sport, and again on the top floor of the building.

Looking directly across the street in the late afternoon.

Looking northeast later that evening.

Looking northwest the next morning in the rain.

We had a lovely view in Munich, but I only made one exposure and didn't pull the shutter all the way out and blocked three-quarters of the frame.  Sigh.

In Strasbourg, there was a bakery just across the street and just before sunrise, their workroom above the store, with several busy chefs, was the only light on.

A narrower view to the right a few minutes later that morning.

In Paris we had a great location, but the view out the window was of the interior courtyard, which did look nice from the breakfast room.

The Evil Cube was loaded with Portra 400.  Supper Club Shorty with Ektar 100.  I'll leave it to you to work out which was which.

Abroad: The Populist in Paris

We had thought about going to the Louvre, but didn't really make plans, and it's really gotten hard to go there. We'd been there twice before and in recent days we'd been treated to a lot of classic European painting, so we decided to go to the Pompidou Center instead.

We walked from our hotel near the Place de la Concorde and stopped for lunch at Le Café des Initiés on Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Saw a '64 or '65 Mustang with a really loud V8 go by. Tried to make friends with the house cat.

The famously exposed exterior.

After several galleries of conceptualism, we sat and watched a film of Samuel Beckett wandering around a room.  It seemed like a good time to take a picture of the utilitarian emergency exit.

The guards in other museums we encountered were very civil service and dressed either in uniforms or dark blazers.  In the Pompidou Center they are mostly college age, fashionably dressed in a definitely art-student manner, often lounging in a chair in a pose of boredom or fatigue. This one was older than most, possibly in his forties. He stood up and then noticed my camera and tripod next to me on the bench, facing him. He stepped over and asked if it was OK for him to move.  I said "Sure." He briefly stepped out of the room and came right back and leaned against the doorway.

We took some refreshment on the top of the building overlooking Paris before the exhaustive David Hockney retrospective.

They also have a few little sculpture gardens out on the roof. On the front of the building there's a crawl with a repeating message that said something like "Picasso, Matisse, the Best view in Paris..."

The next day, after a walk in the Tuilleries and along the Seine with the Evil Cube (in a future blog post), we hopped the metro for a walk on the Left Bank.

Our first destination was Luxembourg Gardens, the only one of TripAdvisors top-five-things-to-see-in-Paris that we hadn't ever seen. Even with these formal gardens in the middle, and the automatic rifle toting guards around the palace (where the Senate meets), it has a real city park feel to it.

I never really associated impressionism with the Luxembourg gardens, but it was instantly recognizable as the subject of dozens of lesser known paintings from regional museums in the U.S.

We had lunch at the Pavillon de la Fontaine right in the garden. We would never sit on the porch in jackets for lunch on a day with autumnal temperatures, but we happily had meals out doors several times in those conditions in Europe.

After I ordered my omelette jambon et fromage and Sarah her quiche, the waiter inquired if we might enjoy some frites as well. Well, of course. They were some of the best of what was an exceptional fried potato trip.

Continuing the Latin Quarter nature of our walk we stopped at Shakespeare and Company. Sarah bought a cozy mystery to read on the airplane home.

We crossed the river to the Île de la Cité, to visit Sainte Chapelle. Maybe because it's much smaller than a cathedral and therefore more intimate, it makes a bigger impression. And all done without electricity. I got caught by a guard and told I shouldn't hold my (little rubber-footed) tripod against the stone doorway, but think I had counted up to 24 already. I tried to explain it was a pinhole camera, but that wasn't the point. (A tourist in a business suit with a digital SLR had a fully extended tripod in the middle of the crowd.) The exposure then was probably about 40 seconds and I'm amazed it recorded people holding up their phones to take pictures.

We managed to sit in the few chairs available for awhile and I tried to support the tripod on my leg.

We still had several metro tickets so we went over to the Eiffel Tower and walked across the river for the iconic view from the Trocadero.

A little more documentary version.

The next day it was out to DeGaulle to begin the voyage home. We arrived three hours early as recommended by everyone, and found that Aer Lingus doesn't open flight check-in until two hours before the scheduled departure. Everything went OK though and the trip back went without incident.

I'll conclude the 35mm portion of our program with an exposure the morning after we got home. As great as it is to travel and visit palaces, gardens and great artworks, it is nice to return home to our own small palace.

It turns out the sunbeams are much the same at Mosquito Hill as they are in palatial gardens.

All with The Populist. .15mm pinhole 24mm from 24x36mm frame - with the Promaster folding pocket tripod. - Later edit: Oops. Those last two are with the new Manfrotto tripod.

Abroad: The Populist in Munich, Strasbourg, and Paris

I misread a list on my phone and we missed the train we intended to take to Munich, so got there later than we had hoped.  Because every accommodation in the city center was either booked or way more expensive than we wanted, we had booked The Prinz Myshkin Parkhotel, somewhat out of the city center, but which was just blocks away from the Nymphenburg Palace and it's extensive gardens. Because of the late arrival, we only got a half hour or so before the sun set to go into the gardens, but it was far enough to encounter a pair of swans looking elegant in the canal, and this little structure named Pagodenberg by a lake, with the sun setting behind it.

A closer view of the building with the camera supported on a recycling bin, there on the left in the previous picture.

Before Sarah and I were married, she subscribed to a series of Time-Life books about Great Museums of the World. It's always a cool experience to stand face to face with the paintings you've seen in a book for years.  We had just gone to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (on a dark and rainy day), and our first stop in Munich was the Alte Pinakotek.

The building interior was more modern than I expected.

You ascend this grand staircase on the south side of the building.

When you get to the top, there is still this brilliant hallway before you enter the galleries.

My favorite museum moment:  Just beyond that door, to the right is a little vestibule that leads to two other galleries.  There are two paintings hanging on the short bit of wall among all those doors: A Da Vinci and a Filippo Lippi!

We had lunch in the dining room of the Pinakotek.  I love museum restaurants.

After lunch, we went to the Ägyptisches Museum below the University of Television and Film.  A very modern, orderly and disciplined presentation of Egyptology, particularly in contrast to the more traditional, oriental, comprehensive and a little busy presentation we had just seen at the Kunsthistorisches Museum a few days earlier.

After being drenched in ancients and classics, we finished up in the Moderne Pinakotek, with it's voluminous four-story grand rotunda.

The galleries are similarly monumental.

In the central hall that bisects the gallery floor, there are occasional artworks with a bench to set your camera on at the end.

We had to check out and get to the station early although our train was later so we had time to have a beer before leaving Munich, and some excellent pommes frittes. They had really great fries everywhere we went on this trip. One surprise was that the restaurants would only have one light and one dark beer available, usually from the same vendor, occasionally a brand we get all the time in the U.S., and one Belgian fruit beer.

We got the right train this time, but it was forty minutes late. We had a more than hour and a half layover in Mannheim, so we weren't too concerned. The longer we got in to the trip, the more the arrival in Mannheim got delayed, and several times, the trained stopped dead on the tracks.  Technical note: I'm pretty sure those arcs are raindrops.  I had the camera held right up against the window.  Everything in "focus" with pinhole ya know.

Arrived in Mannheim with about 10 minutes to go and had a nice conversation with an American girl from Missouri.  I think that's her in the sunshine to the right.

We joked that we came to Strasbourg to eat. We happened to be in the Cathedral Square (everything leads to the Cathedral Square) at lunch and ate at the Brasserie Au Dauphin. I had an excellent volaille with sauce aux champignons that surprisingly came with this giant bowl of those fantastic frites. And bread.  I hate to see a half of a baguette go to waste. And desert. We overate and ended up having a sampling of Alsatian cheeses and beer in the hotel bar for dinner.

We still made it to a museum or two.

Before lunch, we had gone to the Archeological Museum below the palace.

And after lunch, we came back for the Decorative Arts Museum on the main floor of the Palace.

On to Paris on the 322 km/h TGV.

Got there before check-in time.  We splurged in Paris and were staying about two blocks from the Place de la Concorde, right across the Rue de Rivoli from the The Tuileries, so after having a very French baguette sandwich for lunch, we took a walk in the garden.

Interesting to find a vegetable garden amid all the formal planting.

Crossed the place for a close up of the obelisk.

And scouted out the original Chanel boutique on Rue Chambon.

All with The Populist. .15mm pinhole 24mm from 24x36mm frame - with the Promaster folding pocket tripod.