Fighting the Cold

Some time late last week, the temperatures in Paris took a nose dive straight into the deep freeze.  When I woke up yesterday, the weather.com gadget on my desktop read 24 degrees F with an expected low for the day of 33.  Huh?  Well that's just how things go sometimes in Paris.  And to those of you who live in the frozen tundra and who are scoffing at those temperatures ("practically tropical," I can almost hear you saying), let me just tell you that I have it on good authority from a Montreal native that it really does feel colder in Paris, no matter what the mercury is reading.

Fortunately, I have some indoor projects that need my attention.  For the rest of you, I have a stash of grafitti photos piling up that I can share with you, at least to tide me over until I'm in more of a let's-get-outside-walk-around-and-take-pictures mode.  I admit that they're a bit on the drab monotone side but welcome to my world.





Grafitti

Paris provides a big canvas for grafitti artists and there's all manner of it to be found in pretty much every neighborhood.  Here's a sampling of what I've seen on my recent wanderings about town.

Anyone care to interpret?

Montmartre

I will be blunt. Montmartre is not my favorite place in Paris. It's just that Sacre Coeur with its Dairy Queen dome, the Place de Tetre, and the barrage of wandering sketch artists all feel impossibly cheesy. Now I know that there's another side to the Butte with lovely gardens and quiet byways and special markers reminding us of the artists and writers who once worked there. But call me cranky, it's just kind of hard to appreciate all that when you're getting called "sexy boom boom" by some African guy trying to wrap a string bracelet around your wrist or there's a group of what seems like a thousand Japanese tourists all plugged into their headsets blocking the middle of the street.

But if you're lucky enough to break away from the pack, you might see a few memorable sights. Like this quiet garden where the lemon tree is heavy with fruit.



Or appreciate the finely combed wisps of clouds over the Moulin de la Galette.



Or find your soul mate in a grafitti-ed wall.



And okay, if you insist: one picture of Sacre Coeur. It was after all a beautiful day.

25 Things I Love About Paris: #2

2. Street art that's more than grafitti.

This wall is on rue Mouffetard near the Pantheon. The painting is by Pierre Alechinsky, the poem is by Yves Bonnefoy. I've looked around for a translation but finding none, I'm not going to even try. Suffice it to say, that it's about a tree and how it affects people.

Lots more great wall art can be found in Belleville and the Buttes aux Cailles neighborhoods, among others.

Up Up and Away

Spotted in Belleville in the 20th arrondissement, not too far from where that iconic French film, The Red Balloon, was made. My walk through Belleville took me through a noisy open air market, a bustling street lined with Asian restaurants and food shops, some of the quietest little lanes I've seen in Paris, and a sweet community garden brimming with vegetables, herbs, and flowers. And then there's the view of Paris from the Parc de Belleville -- in a word, fantastique. This wall was one of several beautifully rendered murals my friend and I encountered on our walk. You can learn more about it here.