Wednesday Dec 27. Paris.

Revitalized and recharged, I headed out in the late morning for what turned out to be a 28 km walk.

It is obvious that the crowded areas of Paris are often the tourist sites. So I walked from the apartment over to the west side of the city and the Bois de Boulogne, avoiding the historic centre.

Nostalgic for an Italian cappuccino I ordered one from a local bar as I headed out. This is NOT a real cappuccino! More like a watery hot chocolate…. Sigh.

Google maps described this as a ´street art’ site.

Interesting modern builds.

This is a subsidized housing building (HLM) made interesting by built-in pots planted with bamboo.

The Conservatoire de Musique in Paris 17.

I loved this church, l’église Ste-Odile, 1935-1946, built on land freed up by tearing down the last of the fortifications around Paris.

This building, housing a contemporary art gallery, opened in 2014 in the large Bois de Boulogne park. It was built as a philanthropic initiative by a conglomerate of luxury companies and is run by the Fondation Louis Vuitton. It was designed by the Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry.

The line-up explains why I didn’t go in!

The Bois de Boulogne is largely left as natural forest.

A very very rare house - everyone lives in apartments in downtown Paris. Designed by Le Corbusier, it is open for visits, except today when it wasn’t.

Sunset at the Eiffel Tower.

Christmas lights on the Champs Élysées.

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September 5

I landed at Heathrow this morning at 6 am, a very inconvenient time to get a room and rest! But my student residence accommodation includes a common room with handy couches for a short snooze. The neighbourhood abuts on Regent’s Park, complete with gorgeous flowerbeds. The Queen Mary’s rose garden in Regent’s Park. My neighbourhood wandering took me to the Wallace House which used to be one of the homes of the marquesses of Hertford. The Hertfords were fabulously rich, mainly from extensive land holdings, and in the 18th and 19th centuries avid art collectors. They obviously had Trumpian home decorating tastes. Here are two of their many clocks, all of which need frequent ‘fine tuning’, it appears. I particularly liked two 18th c British paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds in their collection: Mrs Carnac and the hauntingly strange Strawberry Girl.

Sat Oct 4. London.

19 days walking on pilgrimage paths for a total of 395 km or 245 miles on foot (not that arduous - an average of 20.7 km per day, and lots of ‘rest days’ staying put in one place). All of that undone in 1.5 hours on a Eurostar train. I’m not entirely sure what conclusion I’m drawing from that comparison, but I’m back where I started, in London. On my way to my lodgings (I’m staying in a Buddhist retreat centre) I decided to visit the first visitable place to cross my path, which turned out to be the Foundling Museum. Horrified by the sight of infants being abandoned on 18th c London streets, a prosperous seaman, Thomas Coram, spent 17 years raising awareness and funds, as well as obtaining royal permission to build London’s first children’s charity. Opened in 1739, the Foundling Hospital continued its work until the 1950s, and actually is still active as a non-institutional resource, under a different name. Here is a photo of it in 1935. So many similarities to ...

Fri Oct 3. Lille.

I had a lovely day in Lille. In fact, all my days on this trip have been lovely! In the morning I went to the very large Palais des Beaux-Arts. This museum holds the largest collection of works of art of any French institution outside Paris. The collection started at the time of the French Revolution as the works of art of the nobility and of the church were confiscated, and continued on apace due to various enthusiastic municipal governments. By 1892 the collection was so large and important that the Palais, its current house, was constructed in the centre of town. The first fun aspect was the recent work of the Swiss artist Felice Varini who used the museum’s interior as his canvas. The oldest works of art are in the ‘basement’, beautifully displayed. Look at the marvellous three dimensionality of this (flat) marble plaque sculpted by Donatello (c 1435) showing Salomé dancing for the head of John the Baptist. And modern technology brings statues alive by giving them back t...

Celia Walks

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