Paris Part 1: More Marble Bodies than a Twilight Novel

I am prefacing this post by saying that these Paris posts are not in chronological order...I edited all the museum photos first, so I decided to post them first. 

Wanting to be cultured folk, we decided to spend a day at the Louvre, completely forgetting that sheer act of trying to view the art is a battle that takes, perseverance, skill and the patience of...well, much more patient people than we happen to be. The whole establishment is so beautiful though, that even after seeing the monstrous line we chose to press on. 

I really wanted to see the sculpture gallery. And not just because that wing is usually much quieter with tour groups buzzing through only occasionally in a very quiet and efficient manner.

The summer after I graduated high school, I saved up my money for a study abroad trip to Paris with a local community college. Since I was not about to use precious summer hours to do anything remotely resembling work, I signed up for poetry and watercolor classes. During that summer I cranked out some of the worst poetry ever written in the English language including but not limited to a poem told from the perspective of the stones of Notre Dame. Yes, that actually happened. And it was just as awful as you might imagine.

While my skills at watercolor probably rivaled my (lack of) skills in angst spewing poetry writing,  I did enjoy it and would escape the loud, drunk college student hostel we were staying in by coming to the Louvre and splitting my time between the Dutch masters and the sculpture wing. There are plenty of little nooks there to curl up in and think and try again and again to figure out how to draw hands correctly. 

I still can't get them right.

Okay, enough reminiscing. The sculptures were still as lovely and serene as ever. This statue of Artemis is one of my favorites.

One of the many things I love about the Louvre is that the palace is just as astounding as the art contained within. Every ceiling, door, stairwell and window frame is a testament to the thousands of craftsmen that helped build it.

Excellence in marble ruffs.

My dad is pretty hard to please in the art department, but he LOVES the Winged Victory. So I tried to do it justice in photos. This is one of several that I am really happy with. In the next post I will share more of the things that caught my eye during our time here.

It's. Almost. Friday. Huzzah.

Creepy Baby Hands

Work, life and oddly spaced holidays have kept me away from this blog for the past week or so. To make up for it, I present you with the following: one magnificent facepalm and three photos in which people are being touched by creepy baby hands. View, enjoy, ponder the unimaginable hours of human labor that went into sculpting these creepy babies and then tomorrow we will begin again with this photo posting business.

And it shall be called: I Thought I Told You I Like My Sweaters Air Dried. Also Where Are the Organic Strawberries I asked For?

And it shall be called: Nah Steve, I Got This Round. Nancy Will Text You...I Hope...Because You're Kind Of A Downer When Women Don't Call You Back.

And it shall be called: Nothing...I just have...nothing. But I had to post it just so others could bear witness to the fact that this is a disembodied baby hand on a naked woman's back. Are we all in agreement that that is what we are looking at right now? Yes? Good.

Okay, I'm off to have some serious nightmares about this last one now.

Happy Tuesday!

A Long Weekend Means...

On the road to Interlaken

One of the nicest things about having a car here is that we can just hop in at our leisure and explore the countryside. A few weekends ago we decided to drive out to Interlaken and see what there was to see. 

Interlaken is...odd. There are really charming bits of it and then bits that look like they were really popular in the 1960's and have remained that way ever since. There was some great wall texture though and the sign above which delighted my designer's soul to no end.

Also lots of these floaty gentlemen about...not sure what the proper term for this past time is: paragliding? Hang gliding? Slow parachuting? Testing fate? Hanging from an umbrella in a jumpsuit? 

This is located in one of the many little towns we drove through on our way to Interlaken (I just like typing Interlaken, so I am going to use the word frequently throughout this post. Interlaken.) This gem looks out over a gas station where we bought some bread. It also marks the spot where I attempted to use my rudimentary German skills and learned that Swiss German (Schweizerdeutsch) is absolutely nothing like the German I learned high school. They say 'merci' for starters. Are you serious right now Switzerland? Thanks for leaving me stammering like an idiot at the cash register trying to choke out the one German word I know with any certainty and then throw another language at me. Color me confused. Although stammering like an idiot has pretty much become a way of life for me here. Along with looking forlorn and hoping people will read my mind without me having to utter one more bastardized syllable of French. Buuuut we can expand on the trials of French in a later post. One that is filled with complaining. For now, back to pastoral loveliness.

En route, we stopped occasionally to have "no, but do you SEE how amazing this view is?!" moments.

Guard of Interlaken.

The two Lakens of Interlaken.

Maidens of Interlaken.

Shingles of Interlaken.

Fancy Domiciles of Interlaken.

Future Nightmares of Interlaken.

Dueling Crests of Interlaken.

Signs that say 'Interlaken' of Interlaken.

So, there you have it. Interlaken in a nutshell. A cute sleepy little town that has much water flowing through it. I did a little reading about it after visiting and it seems like it is mainly a good place to go due to its close proximity to other places. Food for thought.

Lovely Girls

I like old things. Over the years I have developed a LOT of restraint when going to danger zones like flea markets and antique fairs (minus the Craigslist End Table Relapse of 2009. We do not talk about that). My kryptonite though lies in old photos showing interesting period clothing or weird situations. The clothing is easy enough to explain - I studied costume design in college and would troll the internet for photos that showed what kind of hat was appropriate for a morning visit in Victorian England or proper attire for an asylum inmate in the early 19th century (in case you are wondering, the answer is scant and covered with dirt). It's a good thing I didn't have access to Etsy at the time or I would not have had money for food.

So now I have a bit of a collection and I'd like to start sharing them here so they can perhaps inspire others. I unearthed these two interesting girls at an antique store in Chicago and am particularly enamored with them. The top girl especially is so interesting - I'm fascinated by her hairstyle (very modern) and the buttons on her jacket. I have no idea when these were taken but by the cloche hat on the girl below, I'm guessing sometime in the twenties. The photos have the slightest bit of hand tinting on them but don't appear to have been taken in a very formal studio setting - evidence given by the blurriness and half smile in the bottom photo. I love the style of these women and wish I knew the context in which these photos were taken.

Globus Design

I've posted before about Globus (I pronounce it GLOB-us in my head) before, but to recap it is the delectable food mecca located a ten minute walk from our apartment. Waaaay to close for responsible decision making.

We've come up with a strategy: save some money from the food budget each week so that at the end of the month we can go to Globus and splurge on irresponsibly delicious food items. This plan also keeps us from accidentally wandering in midweek (disaster) and allows us to have a pretty spectacular feast once a month.

The thing that makes Globus even harder to resist is the package design for their store-brand products. It's simple and lovely and makes their products really stand out on the shelf (and shout things like "take me home! Love me! I will make your spice rack look like a whimsical fairyland!). I particularly love the illustrations.

That apricot yogurt is not messing around. I wish I was eating it right now. Alas, there is much of May to go...

And now for something insanely cute

Abundantly mountainous

Chronologically, this post belongs right after Gruyère, but I realized that I had totally missed posting about the Vevey funicular so I had to set that up before we got to this post. Because this post involves both a funicular AND a cable car. Up a bigger mountain. That is steeper. 

We left Gruyère kind of confused at the touristy bizarreness of it (and with 50% of us seriously craving cheese). On the way home, we drove in and out of several little ski resort towns until the above wires caught our eyes. Before I had time to protest about being suspended hundreds of feet above a snowy, rocky death, Anthony had pulled into the parking lot and bought tickets to the top. The funicular ride was actually very beautiful, but when we switched to the cable car my knees started shaking a bit. It was less the height and more the swaying that occurred oh so very far from the ground.

As with our previous experience, the view at the top completely made up for the harrowing experience of getting there. I think I need to put a little more faith in Swiss engineering.

We only had about fifteen minutes to run around and act like super tourists (No, but look at THAT mountain! It's the pointiest mountain ever! Look at the snow! It's as pure and white as baby angel dandruff!) before the cable car took its last descent for the evening.

The ride back was filled with kids. And they weren't scared, so I decided that maybe I needed to get over myself already. Or maybe those kids were just distracted by the delicious looking snacks their mom kept handing out. Did I mention that hunger was severely impacting my ability to behave in a normal manner at this time?

All in all a pretty adventurous spur-of-the-moment trip. Very worth it.