Paname! On y va!

Let the drizzle drizz. Let the wind blow. Let the temperatures tumble. For this week we are headed for Paris.

Without being disrespectful to the splendours on a smaller scale that make up the fine flemish city of Lille, I have to eulogize a little about a city with which I have been smitten since first I visited it almost 30 years ago.

There is something about that city that immediately evokes an array of different images all of them lending themselves to be photographed, painted or captured in some way. I was surprised to put it mildy to discover that the reconstruction of the French capital was in part influenced by Napoleon the Third's exile in London during the 1840s and his goal to modernize and improve sanitation as much as it was deter revolution via the barricaded medieval streets. Haussman's work is still very much in evidence and gives a grandeur, a magnificence which makes Paris, for me at least, a majestic and impressive city in a way that London is not. There is a congruence about Paris which by its very lack makes London equally fabulous albeit differently.

So, back to the long weekend. Not having had a break since a week away in June last year when we went to Marrakesh, this is a long-awaited trip. Long planned too as I successfully acquired TGV celebratory tickets back in September and so the travel is cheap as is, as ever, the accommodation generously offered by Max's aunt and godmother. The sight of the Eiffel Tower from the flat always always moves me for some inexplicable reason. To think the Parisiens, or parigots, of the time detested the iron structure and looked forward to its early demolition.

Our time coincides nicely with the first Sunday of the month when many of the museum's and galleries are free. I have to confess that I have never really visited the Louvre apart from a 5 minute foray into the foyer once. It always seems so busy and I cannot bear crowded museums. Probably not much hope then this time as tout le monde et son chien will be trying to get in.

I have booked a show though. It is a bit of a surprise for Max. Inexpensive at only 14€ a ticket , and very much off whatever the parisian equivalent of Broadway is, the piece is entitled "Piaf, une vie en rose et noir" and is described as a play with music. A trifle obvious perhaps but whose voice captured the essence of Paris more than Edith?