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The most recent entries are at the top of this page. Earlier entries follow in reverse chronological order.

18-20.04.2016

John and I joined our friends Dave and Charlotte in Paris this week. Among the 4 of us we visited the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Orangerie Museum (which was previously used to house orange trees), the Rodin Museum, the Orsay Museum and Notre Dame de Paris. We picked up many small art prints which we've framed. Our place is beginning to look like an art gallery itself with the art of Picasso, Gaudi, Chagall, Rodin and others hanging all over our place. It's a very pleasant home atmosphere.

John and I took a nighttime boat ride on the Seine for a different perspective on many famous sites. There was even a kissing bridge we went under -- and we kissed. John told our French neighbors it was "très romantique." Dave and Charlotte took the cruise the previous night and recommended it. We also recommend it. The 4 of us tried out several restaurants and rode the train and subway systems and we walked a lot. Our tiny hotel room was situated near Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter - it was an excellent location AND it had a balcony with French doors. We took some pics on the balcony with our friends. It just happened that their place was only 5 or 6 blocks away and we visited one another. It was great to see our friends again and to get to know them even more. They have been excellent friends for more than a dozen years and we are so happy that our moving 9,000 km away didn't put a chill in that friendship.

John gets all mushy over history and famous art. He is very attentive when we go to art museums, and he is enthralled with history. It is the history depicted by art - the circumstances of the population, the development of engineering and architecture, the structure of politics and social protocol and caste systems of the eras that we both enjoy learning as well as seeing first hand the beauty of the art and architecture. I like the art a lot, but I like politics, social innovations and science even more.

John also goes crazy over books. He's 100% incurable. So we went to the Shakespeare and company bookstore to view the history of great writers. Upstairs is a tiny old office with a dilapidated old typewriter where authors would work. Some greats wrote there including Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, William Styron, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Langston Hughes, Ray Bradbury, James Baldwin, William S. Burroughs - well, you get the idea. You can read more about the place here and here.

On Monday we passed Republic Square where the Nuit Debout (similar to Occupy in the U.S.) meetings take place every Monday evening. We were going to go back that evening but we were a bit tired so we missed it. Here are a few links to articles about Nuit Debout:
1) Official site for Nuit Debout
2) The Guardian - 13 April
3) The Guardian - 12 April

This was our second trip to Paris after moving to Nice. We stayed 2 days and 1 night the first time and 3 days and 2 nights this time. The hotels and restaurants are expensive there but airfare is cheap (with advanced planning), so we want to do one day trips the next few times we go there (and to other places).

Strange French coffee ad of a human Godzilla with coffee cup spine.	Great old building we saw while walking around Paris.	Ruth and Charlotte clowning around on our hotel balcony.
Ruth with Dave and Charlotte, good friends that we knew in San Diego.	John and Ruth	Dave and Charlotte
The Tuileries Garden is a major gathering spot.	Place de la Concorde with the Obelisk of Luxo.	The Seine
Auguste Renoir's "Peaches" at the Orangerie Museum in Paris.	"Two Young Girls" by Renoir	"Young Ladies at the Piano" by Renoir
"Claude Renoir Playing" by Renoir.	"Apples and Biscuits" by Paul Cezanne at the Orangerie Museum.	"On the Grounds of Château-Noir" by Cezanne
"The Embrace" by Pablo Picasso	"Arlequin and Pierrot" by André Derain	"Georges Clemenceau" by Auguste Rodinat the Orangerie Museum.
"Waterlilies: Morning" by Claude Monet.	"Waterlilies: Setting Sun" by Claude Monet at the Orangerie Museum.	"Waterlilies: Clouds" by Claude Monet.
"Waterlilies: Green Reflections" by Claude Monet.	Dave and Charlotte in the Waterlilies Room 1 at the Orangerie Museum.	"Waterlilies: Morning with Weaping-willows" by Claude Monet.
Rodin's "The Kiss" in front of the Orangerie Museum.	Dave and Charlotte recreating "The Kiss".	Charlotte looking at the oldest tree (a locust tree planted in 1601) in Paris in the Square René Viviani with the Gothic church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre in the background.
The historic "Lost Generation" Shakespeare and Company bookstore.	Shakespeare and Company interior.	Shakespeare and Company's writing room where James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway wrote.
Point Zero in front of the Notre Dame cathedral, a marker showing the geographic center of Paris where all distances in France were traditionally measured.	The facade of Notre Dame cathedral.	The high-vaulted nave in Notre Dame's interior.
Rose stained-glass window.	Vaulted ceilings of the Notre Dame.	Notre Dame's interior
Ribbed vaulted ceiling	Notre Dame exterior.	Notre Dame's flying buttresses supporting the high walls.
The Portal of the Last Judgement is in the centre of the west façade.	Charlotte and Ruth in the Notre Dame interior.	Still an active church after 850 years.
The choir wall	The exterior of the Auguste Rodin Museum in Paris.	Rodin's "The Thinker"
Rodin's "The Thinker"	Rodin's "Balzac"	Sculpture of "Claude Lorrain"
Rodin Museum exterior	Rodin's "Monument to Victor Hugo"	Detail of "Jules Bastien-Lepage"
While outside in the Rodin Museum we saw what looked to be gym shorts in French flag configuration.	Rodin's "The Gates of Hell" from The Divine Comedy	Detail of "The Gates of Hell" with The Thinker
"The Burghers of Calais"	Rodin's "Girl in Flowered Hat"	"The Kiss" by Rodin
"The Kiss" by Rodin	A happy surprise finding "Portrait of Père Tanguy" by Vincent van Gogh in the Rodin Museum	A study of Victor Hugo by Rodin
"The Cathedral" by Rodin	The exterior of the Rodin Museum	Pont au Double where our Seine cruise boat was docked.
Our cruise boat	Ancient docking ring under the bridge.	Ruth ready for the Seine cruise.
Cruisin'	Musée d'Orsay from the Seine River.	In the evening the students from the Latin Quarter gather on the Seine.
Going under the Pont au Change with Napoleon III's crest.	Pont Alexandre III with the Eiffel Tower.	View of a great looking building from the Seine.
The Louvre from the Seine.	France's National Assembly building.	The Eiffel Tower lights up as we approach on our cruise.
The next morning we visited the Eiffel Tower. John ...	... and Ruth.	I found the structure fascinating. So, I'm including many pics.
Bust of Gustave Eiffel	The Louvre with the Pyramid by I.M. Pei	Louvre Interior
Cour Marly at the Louvre	Beautiful staircases in the Louvre	Cour Marly at the Louvre
Lion sculpture from ancient Turkey	Ancient Greek relief marble	"Oedipus And The Sphinx" by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
"La Grande Odalisque" by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres	"Leonidas at Thermopylae" by Jacques-Louis David	Self-portrait by Jacques-Louis David
"The Consecration of Emperor Napoleon" by Jacques-Louis David	"The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons" by Jacques-Louis David	"The Intervention of the Sabine Women" by Jacques-Louis David
"The Oath of the Horatii" by Jacques-Louis David	A detail from "The Oath of the Horatii"	Winged Victory of Samothrace
"The Charging Chasseur" by Theodore Gericault	"The Raft of the Medusa" by Theodore Gericault	"Liberty Leading the People" by Eugene Delacroix
Ceiling of the Louvre	"Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci	"The Virgin and Infant" by Raffaello Sanzio
"Baldassare Castiglione" by Raffaello Sanzio	"Summer" by Giuseppe Archimboldo, a portrait in vegetables	Taking the RER train to Charles de Gaulle Airport and back home to Nice

14.04.2016

Today we finished putting up one of our ceiling lamps. Because this building is old some of the wood in the ceiling is rotted and that caused some difficulty with finding a space to put the lamp support, which is supposed to go over (with a cross bar) or be attached to a horizontal stud. The last tenants just put a giant hook in one stud but that hook was in the way of the canopy that is supposed to abut the ceiling. Link. I removed the hook and found a location where I could insert the brace for the ceiling lamp. It looks nice. (see images below)

Whirlpool is finally coming to get our defective refrigerator. It only took 2 months. I definitely do not recommend Whirlpool. We have a Whirlpool washer that works well, but with all the difficulty in getting help with the refrigerator I will never buy another Whirlpool product. At least not in France. We are looking at Samsung and LG refrigerators now. Just the single door type with freezer. Here they call the large double door $1,000 - $4,000 refrigerators "American refrigerators."

Because of the trouble we've had with several local stores we are primarily ordering from Amazon.fr. It's difficult to reach the seller on Amazon.fr, but it is easy to return products at their expense. So far we have had very few troubles using Amazon.fr.

Old light was just a bulb hanging from the ceiling.	New ceiling lamp installed.	New ceiling lamp on.

12.04.2016

We were so happy when our tools arrived. Before that we'd been making repairs with a can opener, a corkscrew and a nail file. Challenging. Actually, we did have a screwdriver and a hammer, but our going 5 months with so few tools was an effort, to say the least.

We finished putting together the kitty tree. It's modular so we might rearrange things latter, but for now this is the configuration we will use. The cats like their new toy very much but many times we still find them sleeping on the floor or in a cardboard box or on one of the beds. Cats like to sleep around.

I received and put together the dining set, but now I need to paint it with a wash (so the wood pattern shows through) that nearly matches my living room multimedia console. My console has an acacia wood top and an interesting color paint on the sides. There's work to be but we still intend to have a dinner party near the end of April. And now we have a few more friends to invite.

Kitty tree all done.	Danny watches the birds from his perch.	Tommy loves his scratching brush.

10.04.2016

We went to the Marc Chagall museum in Nice. When I recall my introduction to his art so many years ago I think of the blue horses heads -- something like this: (I and the Village). I didn't see any paintings like I remembered but there were a few horses in some of the paintings. One small print we took home has a green horses head.

Chagall's very large stained glass images are wonderful. One room of the exhibit was dominated by this work. I felt serene on the plush seats in that room as I studied the stained glass art. Beautiful art.

In another room there is a series of development stages of several of his works. After viewing them I felt that I understood more of his thought processes during creation of his works.

Here's a link to Marc Chagall's history.

Here is an image of Chagall and his wife Marc and Bella Chagall.

Ruth in front of the Musée Marc Chagall.	The Dance and the Circus	Le Cirque Bleu
Triumph of Music	Noah's Ark	Piano with Chagall painting on lid.
Chagall horse sketch	Adam And Eve Expelled From Paradise	Detail from Adam And Eve Expelled From Paradise of the Tree of Life
Closeup of The Tree of Life	Stained Glass window by Chagall	David and Bathsheba
Song Of Songs IV	Song Of Songs III	Detail from Song of Songs
The Green Violinist and Dance	David 1914	Les Arlequins
Stage design for the opera "The Magic Flute"	Chagall Stained Glass	Sketch of Igor Stravinsky
Jerusalem	John with Artist's Family

08.04.2016

We have 3 doves now: Lovey and Dovey and their baby (we presume), Wuvey. Wuvey is the smallest and most skittish and usually last to arrive for a feeding. We are still trying to determine how we can feed the doves but not the pigeons. The pigeons leave us with huge piles of poopy to clean. The doves poop very small amounts. We'd rather the pigeons not come but if they keep eating the food we give the doves we will never get rid of them. John read that doves like fruit but pigeons don't so we cut up fruit into tiny pieces and put it out. The doves ignored it and the pigeons ate it. The doves have longer and thinner beaks than do the pigeons so I'm thinking I should try a cover to their food with small holes that their beaks can get through but the pigeon' beaks can't. Maybe something like a splatter screen for cooking put with larger holes. I'll keep working on finding a solution.

John bought several plants and we are planning our gardens on the balconies. I'm growing strawberries and hanging flowers. John is growing fruit trees, veggies, herbs and flowers. Spring is here. The weather is gorgeous and we are happy.

About half our door knobs are brass. They are old and tarnished and the tarnish is not attractive. I managed to clean one with elbow grease and it looked very nice -- like a golden spiral, then we bought some brass cleaner but it doesn't do much. There's a product here called Brasso that is supposed to be good for cleaning brass but so far I haven't found any.

Lovey, Dovey and Wuvey.	One of our brass door knobs.

06.04.2016

Tonight we attended a meeting with the Nice Democrats Abroad. Originally that presentation was going to be about Hillary but they changed it to discussing Trump and all that his candidacy entails. It was very informative as were many of the comments by members. At the end I exchanged emails with a couple of people and they referred me to others. I met one woman who lives in Oregon and who will be back next year. She gave me advice and fun companionship. We will stay in touch via email. I'll send her, and others I met recently, the progressive political information I send my friends in the states.

We have a huge entryway here. I think they call it a stay here, but I'm not sure because our realtor called an outdoor window shade a stay. Our entry way has closet doors the long length of 2 walls. It could be used as a "sitting room" with the furniture moved away from the walls, but we decided to use it as our game room.

When we were looking for game tables I briefly reviewed some for foos ball. Foos ball here is called baby foot. Link. I haven't played foos ball for more than 40 years.

But we decided to order something more portable -- a table tennis set with a large table (but only about 80% the size of a regulation table). When we are not playing we will move it against the one wall that has no doors and throw a tapestry (or something similar) over it so it looks decorative.

In Eugene, at our last house we had a pool table and an air hockey table. At the house before we just had the air hockey table. We played ping pong when we were in San Diego.

05.04.2016

I learned a few things since some of my earlier entries. I learned that our bedspreads with removable covers are called duvets and that they are common in the U.S. (even Target has them). I never saw them before - I always bought a bedspread. Here you don't have a choice - they only sell duvets. This video demonstrates an easy way to put on the duvet cover. I guess I should have watched morning TV in the states.

I also learned that French Doors are called double doors here. We go through double doors exiting onto our balconies and going into the two rooms off the entry way. Those doors are very nice. Standing in my room, flinging open the French doors to my balcony it seems so romantic still. I'm sure it will feel prosaic someday, but not now.

And I learned that the "faux ami" (false friends) in French language can be amusing. For example, the word for Brillo pads (and other items) here is tampons. Makes me glad to be menopausal!

Ruth discovers that in France "tampons" also means scouring pads.