PARIS, IN THE SPRING...

The streets of Paris...

A view from the top... the Tour Eiffel casts a grand shadow over the city of Paris.

Giant red and yellow cog wheels haul the lifts up and down the tower, ferrying visitors. The lift to the summit feels like an endless ride into the sky...

Pretty streets of Paris... the Notre Dame, St Germain des Pres, Musee d'Orsay, L'Orangerie...



Walk along the river bank...

Audrey Tatou ('Amelie') plays Nora in the French translation of Henrik Ibsen's 'A Doll's House', at Theatre Madeliene.

Paris street markets...

Montparnasse Cemetery... the resting place of de Beauvoir and Sartre.

PARIS, IN THE SPRING...

One emerges from a shadowy, cool underground passage and onto a narrow garden path. Through patches of pretty flowers, and beyond a wall of giant green leaves, lies a lake; a perfect, tranquil lake, scattered with blossoming water lilies and shaded by the vibrant, yet graceful branches of weeping willow.

 

 

Monet’s garden at Giverny

 Monet’s garden at Giverny – his home from 1883 until his death in 1926 - seems almost as if it is a realisation of his famous paintings, not simply the place which inspired him to create some of his most priceless work.

There are two parts to the garden – a flower garden, called Clos Normand, in the front near the house, and a Japanese inspired water garden on the other side of the road.

When Monet first arrived in Giverny with his wife Alice, the house they rented – a long, low pink building with roughcast walls – sat in two and a half acres of scrubby orchard and garden. Beyond the garden lay waterlogged meadows, full of willows and poplar trees, and poppy fields out in the distance, as far as the eye could see. It was a far cry from the wonderland that exists today.

Monet didn’t like organised gardens; he grouped together flowers according to their colours, and then let them grow wild.

Today, Monet’s house is visited by over 500,000 people, for the seven months that it is open to the public each year. Its picaresque pink house, and garden full of purple pansies, tulips and rhododendrons, is truly beautiful. Inside his former residence, Monet’s walls are adorned with ravishing Japanese paintings, many by Hiroshige and Kurosawa. Each room is decorated in a different colour – a fuchsia bedroom, a canary yellow dining room and a blue kitchen, the shiny copper pots and pans lined neatly along a shelf.

But while the house, with its pretty garden path, and its chicken coop, are completely charming, it is the enchanting garden that surrounds the lake, which is truly wondrous. It is easy to imagine Monet sitting here, his easel and canvases set up in front of him; as one sits under the shade of the willows, glancing up to look out over the lake at the water lilies, the view is no less astounding than one of Monet’s paintings. It is a work of art in itself.

DOG DAYS IN LUXEMBOURG

You could call it bad planning. A two-day trip to Luxembourg, to see Florence and the Machine, surely couldn’t be that much of a catastrophe? Not Flo, at least; but perhaps everything else.

 

 

Beer And Chocolate In Brussels

It began in Brussels. Somewhere back in our days of (bad) planning, we had read (or obviously, misread) that the train from Brussels took only an hour to get to Luxembourg. So you can imagine our shock horror when the ticket salesman at Brussels Midi told us the journey would be three hours.

So, to lift our spirits, we spent the day in Brussels. We visited the Manneken Pis, the Grand Place. But no amount of beer and chocolate could prepare us for a very, very long train ride. Endless stretches of mind-numbing green countryside, only occasionally dotted with cows or horses. Eventually, we arrived at our destination: Luxembourg.

Luxembourg

Once upon a time, there was a place called The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. A city out of a storybook, it is complete with a skyline of turrets and towers, dramatic gorges, and quaint riverside quarters. It is also regarded as Europe’s leading financial district.

From the rather sleazy Gare Centrale, we made our way to Hotel Chatelet, a charming B&B on the edge of the Petrusse Valley. We ventured to Place Guillame II, where we chanced upon a brash brasserie for dinner. The sky was a pretty sunset colour. We hoped for good weather the following day. Of course, it rained.

Even under grey skies, Luxembourg does have some picaresque, medieval qualities. The Bock Casemates are worth exploring; a series of damp rock galleries, built in the mid-18^th century, which have been home to everything from bakeries to slaughterhouses, as well as a garrison to soldiers during WW1, they provide unique views of the valley and the lower town.

But other than the casemates, and the Musee d’art Moderne de Grand-Duc Jean, the city’s striking modern art gallery located in Kirschberg (somewhat of an “apocalyptic plateau”, severely lacking human presence, on the other side of town), there is really little else to see. Even an attempt at retail therapy in the city centre was thwarted by a lack of original shops and boutiques. We could have visited the Musee d’Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg, or trekked out to the military cemeteries. Instead, we drank hot chocolate overlooking the Palais Grand-Ducal, and then headed back to our hotel to prepare ourselves for the concert.

Florence And The Machine At Kultur Fabrik

It was in the afternoon that disaster almost struck. We were quietly sipping tea at the hotel, when we thought to have a look at Flo’s support act. Straight to the internet, and just as we were searching, we found ourselves suddenly confused.

Florence and the Machine was presented in Luxembourg my music promoter Den Atelier, a music venue a few hundred metres from our Hotel However, upon closer inspection, we discovered that the concert itself was being held at Kultur Fabrik, an abattoir-turned-music-venue in Esch-sur-Alzette, 17km from Luxembourg City.

For a moment, we thought we were in the wrong country. Somehow, we managed to get a train from Gare Centrale to Esch in 22 minutes, followed by a decent walk along Rue de Luxembourg to Kultur Fabrik. All we wanted by the time we got there was beer, and a ‘Florence’ t-shirt.

Luckily, we didn’t miss anything. Florence was amazing; she saved the day with her ethereal, bellowing voice, and trance-like performance. She played all our favourites: ‘Dog Days’, ‘Raise it up’, ‘Drumming song’. She is a truly enigmatic stage presence, softly spoken, but full of energy, and genuinely engaged by the music she sings. We danced away, amid the small throng of fans – Kultur Fabrik is actually quite an intimate space, and we managed to get pretty close to the stage.

Exhausted from all the jumping, (and also from all our rail journeys) we made the last train back to Luxembourg City, content with out souvenir t-shirts, and the knowledge that we would never have to visit Luxembourg again.