Hindsight

I just realized that my timing is bad. I was going to post the honeymoon reports day-by-day, but I have other commitments pretty much 24/7 this week. So this post is just to say, the next few honeymoon posts may be delayed.

In the meantime, check this out — Candlewick has a YouTube channel. I hope to contribute some homebrew Odyssey trailers to it, later this summer. Let me know if you have ideas or want to help!

We went to Montmartre and Sacre Couer. We climbed the many steps. We avoided the scammer who wanted to weave a bracelet on one of our wrists. We went inside, and were blown away by the architecture and by the amazing mosaics.

We wandered around Montmartre a bit, looking at the artists’ stalls, tile rooftops, and very nice views of the city.

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We swung back by Notre Dame — on the weekend there had been a long line to get in, but there was no line today, so we went in and marveled, especially at the ornamental gates throughout, and the cool relics they have tucked away in one side of the transept. Alison got some lovely shots through one of the stained glass windows.

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We slept really late, and then got off to a slow start, having breakfast in the apartment and looking at guidebooks and such, so Day 2 turned out to be kind of short.

We swung back by Notre Dame. Right across the river is the famous bookstore Shakespeare & Co. (about which I’m sure Alison will eventually blog at length, so I’ll say no more about it)

Then we went to a nearby flower market where they also have birds and other animals on Sundays (like these adorable sleeping ferrets).

I drew this cool old church in the neighborhood.

We headed over the the Arab World Institute, a very cool building with patterned metal shades that iris open and closed like camera shutters.

Unfortunately they were closed, so we went on to the Jardin des Plantes (Botanical Garden), where I sat and drew for a while while Alison watched the kids playing. They have a pretty horrifying sculpture next to the playground, of a bear mauling a hunter and his bear cub prey. I guess the message is something like “don’t mess with my kids or I’ll rip your head off.”

Hey, there. Sorry I’ve been so quiet lately. Alison and I took a 16-day honeymoon in Paris and London, and since we got back I’ve been trying to catch up with work, scan all the drawings I did, and go through all the photos we took. Rather than write a novella-length post with hundreds of images, I thought it might be cooler and more reasonable to tell the whole thing on a day-by-day basis, almost as though I were blogging in real-time but with a several-week delay.

We flew out on April 23rd, just as flights were starting to return to normal after the volcanic eruption in Iceland. We landed in Paris early on the morning of the 24th. We had rented an apartment in the Marais area (found on VRBO.com), and arranged for a driver to pick us up at the airport and take us straight to the apartment so we didn’t have to do any navigating in our exhausted state. We got unpacked and then headed out into the city, with the ambition of doing stuff that would keep us awake another ~14 hours until bedtime so we could get ourselves on Paris time as quickly as possible).

Our apartment building had a great stairwell (with a TINY elevator running up the middle of it). It is located very close to the Seine.

Great neighborhood, with tons of charming shops.

Not far away is a humble little place called Notre Dame, which was my first drawing stop.

Then we went to Alison’s favorite Cathedral, St. Chapelle (I should mention that Alison had been to Paris before, but I had not). There was some renovation in progress, which slightly spoiled the full affect, but it’s still beautiful, with a number of quirky details.

Then we headed over to the vast, sprawling art edifice that is The Louvre.

After that we had a lovely dinner and then melted into a puddle of goo.

Tune in for more tomorrow!

And finally, here are two drawings from Central Park — one I did two weeks ago, the other is from the 2007 trip.

Due to signal problems on the Newark-NY line caused by the torrential rains Sunday, we got to languish in Penn Station for two hours, enjoying the absolute lack of either architectural ambience or SEATING OF ANY KIND, while we waited for our train. To those who tore down the magnificent Old Penn Station and designed this travesty I say, #@%$ you.

Also, it didn’t help that we both had colds. Not the best end to our NY trip, which was otherwise quite cool despite the uncooperative weather.

We were in New York City over the weekend. More details and drawings to come, but for now I give you: the F Train at rush hour.

I just found this little pastel I had started in my sketchbook on a trip to Maine last year (or maybe even the year before). I messed around with it a bit more, and thought I’d post it.

Alison has blogged previously about our (first) visit to the FANTASTIC toy & art museum that is the house of Ashley Bryan, famous children’s book illustrator and saint. Okay, he’s not literally a saint, but he should be. Recently we heard that Ashley was in town for a visit to the Cambridge Library, so we went out to say ‘hi’ and see him do his thing. Alison has already written expressively and at length about what an amazing man he is, so check out her original post here. I will merely add that he does a great presentation, and makes the whole audience feel like kids even though half of them are adults.

Here are my drawings from the event.