I Went to France! Part 1

First stop, beautiful, old, new, extravagant Paris. Glorious Paris.

Iron balcony railings.

Everywhere, down any street, amazing, gorgeous doors.

Quaint bookstores that make you feel as though you’ve stepped into a movie set.

Beauty everywhere, even in the smallest details.

And little surprise pieces of art, even in the sidewalk.

By the artist Ememen. He fills small broken spaces with tiles.

And people, lots of people, coming to Paris because it’s Paris, for all the reasons we want to be there.

First stop, the Louvre. The old palace, now a huge, huge, giant, amazing museum.

The lines to get in were shorter if you had tickets, but still long.

So many visitors. Crazy crowded.

Venus de Milo.

The Winged Victory of Samothrace.

People crowding around to see, take pictures and move onto the next thing. So many people.

The day after I was in the Louvre, all the employees, gallery attendants, ticket agents and security personnel went on strike protesting the unmanageable crowds and untenable working conditions. The administration has been trying to come up with a solution to deal with so many people. Limit the numbers? Higher ticket prices? Fewer tour groups? It’s not so easy to do. These are people from all over the world, who want to come and see beautiful, historical pieces of art. Including me.

There is a bit of a remedy, if you stay away from the most popular pieces…

Sorry Mona Lisa.

And get off the beaten path, you can find some relief.

Like the couture show, the Louvre’s first ever fashion exhibit. There were other visitors, but not so many that it was a problem.

Beautiful clothes from various haute couture designers were displayed throughout the Department of Decorative Arts section of the museum.

How perfect it is that they displayed this extravagant Iris Van Herpen dress in this crazy, over the top decorated room.

A closer view of the dress alone.

The room, looking up. I mean. If some is good, then more, and even more and even more on top of that, must be better.

I was beyond happy to find one of my favorite Dior pieces, a gorgeous coat designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri. I had seen this piece at the Dior exhibit in London, but it was set back so that only the front was visible. Here, I could get up close and see in detail the embroideries inspired from a 15th century set of Tarot cards.

You can see behind and against the wall is an Alexander McQueen dress. The 65 pieces exhibited were scattered throughout many rooms. You had to hunt to see them all.

The coat from behind. The shape, the use of medieval imagery, the colors, the details, all so good. Then shown over a modern dress. I love it!

The back.

Please take note, it has been perfectly matched to the colors and designs of the tapestries around it. Fantastic!

This beautiful Balenciaga black dress was in another over the top ornamented room. The contrast of the bold simple shape in this crazy space. Perfect.

They did an excellent job choosing where to display each piece. This Dries Van Noten coat looks as though it came out of the same studio as the tapestry behind.

How about this Balenciaga metal dress next to a suit of armor?

Or this sweet top and skirt in front of a tapestry with a similar Chinoiserie design.

What a treat to see these beautiful pieces set in the amazing French interior spaces. Wow!

Next day, a trip to Versailles. Lots of visitors here too.

Inside were gilded, painted, molded, sculpted rooms. The same design esthetic as the overly ornamented rooms in the Decorative Arts section in the Louvre. Too much! I was trying to imagine how people could live that way. I found myself gazing out the windows at the garden.

Outdoors, away from the crowds, that was where I wanted to be. Even though it was equally controlled, clipped and forced into a geometric designs, I found it refreshing and open. Inside was tight and airless, outside there was sky and greenery.

It was not my kind of a garden, but I was surprised by how much I Ioved it.

Beautiful!

And it was huge. Designed to be viewed while riding in a carriage, I could only walk through a small part. But it was enough! Vast open spaces and wooded areas with multiple paths that would open into ‘rooms’ with fountains and statues.

The huge main lawn, you can just see the palace way in the background.

Out in the garden everything opened up, the crowds spread out, there was a bit of a breeze, it was lovely.

And lovely in town too, on the walk back to the train station, the town of Versailles, with its hedges of clipped trees.

Of all the places I went to in Paris, my favorite was Notre Dame.

In April 2019, I gasped in horror when I saw the videos of the cathedral on fire. It looked to me that it was completely destroyed. Now, 6 years later, they’ve pulled off a miracle and saved this beautiful and iconic building.

I was beyond amazed to see it now, cleaned of centuries of dirt and soot. I know there is controversy about its new color, a creamy white instead of greys, but I liked it. It was the way it was when it was first built, the way the original builders had wanted it to be.

The entrance.

Inside, it sparkled. You could see details that had been lost for years.

The lighter colors made the height and light coming in all the more impressive.

My absolutely favorite part? The stained glass windows. The colors were clean and crisp.

They were created so that illiterate people could look at the pictures and understand the stories.

I had heard that, but before, when I looked at the dirty windows, I thought, how can they understand anything? I could hardly see enough to understand what I was looking at. It turns out that was because 100’s of years of built up dirt obscured the colors. When they are cleaned, everything comes to life. They are perfectly understandable.

Like a graphic novel, laid out for everyone to understand.

They’re still working on it, see the cranes behind, it will take years more to completely finish. But wow. In just a few years they’ve rebuilt, cleaned and restored this beautiful French cathedral. So amazing.

It was hot and it was crowded, but it was Paris! I could not have been happier to be there. What a beautiful place!