Major Announcement

Students of this blog will have suspected my fooling around with AI in the past several months. It started innocently enough, asking for travel itineraries, recipes, the kinds of things one used to ask of Google. Actually, Vicki got me into it. Later I asked it (any of Claude, Co-Pilot, ChatGPT, Gemini) to write a poem, a business plan, a short article on how not to get trampled at Disney...which led to short stories, longer poetical pieces, a novella, a lengthy treatise on boiling water (with recipes), and, most recently, my long dreamed-of biography of the artist and philosopher Renè Ssance. With so much now going on, and with more in the pipeline--all of it, yes, of dubious provenance--I decided to start a second blog: Artifices, https://artificialartifices.blogspot.com. It is the repository of my AI-"assisted" projects, and it is more fully explained in its first post.

I invite you to have a look at Artifices. File it all under the heading of someone's self-amusement. Perhaps you too will be amused. 

More Seemingly Random Paris Scenes

Although the post titles might suggest otherwise, we are not really a flaneur and flaneuse. As Baudelaire defined the term, the flaneur wanders the streets of Paris aimlessly. We're just tourists, wandering, yes, but almost always with some destination, some goal. And, I think it might be argued, even the flaneur has goals, those of observation and understanding. But whatever. I digress. In Paris, wandering, whether aimlessly or not, always reveals interesting sights and elicits interesting thoughts...

The eclairage, aka the Twinkling, of the Tour Eiffel

Vicki and sister Marie, there, then

Another day, I am wandering the 6th, to find Messie Nessie's
Cabinet of Curiosities, a place much to my taste, but not
everyone's

Nothing can top Paris ghost signs

In 2014, I searched all over for lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves,
galangol root...now SE Asian markets are everywhere...

August Comte monument at...

The Sorbonne

And, of course, where else but Paris and the Latin Quarter would
you find a bookstore that just does philosophy?

Another day, at a Vide Grenier at nearby Notre Dame
des Champs...a  neighborhood street sale 

Can be wonderful if it's just the neighborhood residents; not so
wonderful if it's mostly the pros

Now at Marche Edgar Quinet, the big market at
Montparasse...largest offering of oysters I've seen
inland

Enough to outfit a small regiment of pelerins...pilgrims on the Way of St. James...

At one of the famous Montparnasse restaurants...all of them claim Hemingway
was a regular

Witnessing the Paris Marathon from the Passerelle Leopold-Sedar-Senghor,
across the river from the Orsay

Allez! Allez! Allez!

Be afraid, be very afraid of what can be done with AI

Had to go back to Galeries Lafayette for the end of the 30% off 'sale';
by law, there are only the winter and summer "sale" periods in France,
although merchants can do sales anytime just as long as they don't use 
the world "sales" ("soldes"); just FYI 

Nothing beats Parisian ghost signs

At a boulangerie in the 15th

Initial Seemingly Random Paris Scenes

So we arrived in Paris on April 1st, somehow evaded being April-fooled, moved into our apartment, shopped at the Franprix downstairs, and generally re-acquainted ourselves, despite the jet-lag, with the environs. Next day we were at the D'Orsay to buy Carte Blanche passes, and next day after that, FNAC, the Grand Epicerie of Paris, etc., and greeting Vicki's sister Marie and husband Norm at the Gare de Lyon. They had been touring Spain after a cruise to Barcelona, but, as we learned, had been limited because of Norm's bronchitis and a subsequent fall. Not happy campers. At the same time, I had contracted a cold and was similarly happy to take a day or two off to fend off worse developments. Nonetheless, we all got out a bit...

Beautiful art nouveau bookmarks at the Orsay

Spring has sprung...

Interesting chair at a market

Hobbit apples at the Raspail market near our apartment

Crottes fraiches...

Hobbit chickens

Among the neighbors...

Ditto...moving right along to the Hotel de la Marine

Hole in the shutter cut by the Kriegsmarine, to watch the
advance of Free French forces toward the Hotel de la Marine

View of Place de la Concorde and beyond from the Hotel

Interesting chair...

Marie taking it all in

Spring in Luxembourg Park

Pineberries at the Galeries Lafayette food court...our favorite

And you thought Wagyu was Japanese

Dior literary handbags at the Galeries Lafayette...the Joyce
version was 3,000€ (for the small version)

We can never resist this view

Did that too, again

Spring outside the Palais de Justice

Getting harder and harder for sunlight to reach
Saint Chapelle

Lightning lane to Notre Dame

"Our" boulangerie/patisserie, Mikhail Reydillet's
La Parisien, half a block away, continues to win
awards....

Half a block in the other direction, on Rue Fleurus,
across from Gertrude Stein's apartment building, this 
Livres Anciens, old books store...totally intense...
no smoking, sil vous plait...

Interim Update #1,292

After Yellowstone, our March was mostly about continuing our move into our Winter Garden apartment, enjoying visitors, a few excursions to Disney, a No Kings demonstration, celebrating birthdays, and then preparing for a trip to Europe. Amazingly, everything fell properly into place, and on March 31, we jetted, via Philadelphia, to Paris. 

With a glom of hot maple popcorn at EPCOT

At the impressive No Kings demonstration at nearby Clermont, FL

79 year old posing with birthday ice cream sandwich at Morimoto's

And at Adega Gaucha Brazilian steakhouse

Thanks, Rebecca and Jeremy, for a wonderful birthday dinner

Beginning one of our easier crossings

Back in Paris, immigration, luggage, and the RER B had us back
in "our" apartment on Rue Jean Bart in less than 2 hours; the apartment
pretty much unchanged--our 4th year here--the neighborhood pretty
much unchanged too