Cordoba

Mosque/Cathedral, Cordoba

Our tour began in Madrid on May 23 with a short walking tour in the old city the day everyone arrived.  Then on to Cordoba where we had a wonderful tour of the Mosque-Cathedral that is so huge and so stunning for its blend of architectures.

Moorish arches

Built over several centuries by the Muslim rulers of Spain, it became one of the largest mosques in the Arab world.  One enters through the traditional garden where beautiful plants and flowing water add to a mood of meditation.  Inside, the rounded double arches with their distinctive alternation of red brick and white stone give the building height, but the regular rows of columns down 19 naves are full of variety as most were salvaged from various Roman structures and little changed as they were slipped into place.  But the Christian conquest of Cordoba necessitated a change of plan.  The giant tower (above right) was built around the minaret and a gothic-style cathedral was plunked down in the middle of the otherwise untouched Moorish structure.

Gothic and Moorish Influences

Altar, Cordoba Mosque/Cathedral

It's remarkable that the pillars holding up the gothic roof are so overwhelmed by the regularity of the Moorish columns that one hardly notices them, but Christian/gothic mixes with Muslim/moorish in sometimes unpredictable ways (above right).  To my way of thinking, the church inside this building just never seems right.  It remains an interloper almost nine centuries later.  But Ferdinand and Isabella gave it their all and the result is a magnificent altar.

Farewell to the Riviera

Sunday was such a perfect day -- temperature in the mid-seventies, gorgeous sunshine, gentle breezes -- that we couldn't find the energy to leave our sunny deck and do much of anything.  What a lazy, wonderful day!

Plage Keller

Monday was cloudier and cooler and we had more energy for our last outing -- a drive around Cap d'Antibes.  We stopped briefly in Juan-les-Pins to visit the Square FJ Gould and the nearby beach and then drove along the water, past the Eden Roc Hotel, and across the island to Plage de la Garoupe, a large beach with restaurants and piers on which one can alternately sun bathe and eat.  You don't even have to get sandy if you don't want to!

Over a lovely lunch at Restaurant Le César at Plage Keller, Laura and I compared notes on our various beach experiences in the US and elsewhere and we agreed that whether it's the money or the French, we've never experienced beach front life like this anywhere.  No neon signs, no hot dogs and cotton candy, no strewn candy wrappers, no screaming children (there were children, but they were well dressed and well behaved).  The service was lovely and the food top drawer.

Another View of Cap d'Antibes

After lunch, we took a long walk along the beautiful pedestrian waterside trail, le Sentier du Littoral dit "de Tire-poil".                                                            

We enjoyed the drive back to Antibes along the water on the eastern side of the cape.  There were a number of boats about and a surprising number of people given the inauspicious weather.

Negresco Bar

Back to Nice on Tuesday.  For our farewell dinner, we had a drink in the legendary bar at the Hotel Negresco, the Grand Dame of beachfront hotels.    The picture isn't very good, but the bar is wonderful and the large rotunda in the middle of the ground floor with its beautiful stained glass ceiling is absolutely lovely.  From there, it was on to dinner at La Réserve, a restaurant just beyond the old port, right on the water, with beautiful views of the Mediterranean, the lighthouse at the entrance to the old port, and some wonderful mansions on the hillside as the light faded from the sky. (See below.  Out of focus, but you get the point.)  The meal was absolutely wonderful, a terrific conclusion to our wonderful road trip!

Grasse

When I was living in Paris, I had the extraordinary opportunity to tour the Cire Trudon store on rue de Seine with the American Women's Group.  Cire Trudon has been making candles since Louis XIV's day and it is still being run by the same family.  Today, they are mostly in the business of making and selling scented candles and on that day we were lucky enough to meet the perfumer, who was visiting Paris from Grasse, the capitol of French perfume.   I've wanted to go there ever since.

Perfume distillery

Grasse is up in the hills not far from Antibes, so Laura and I drove up there on a sunny, beautiful Saturday.  It was great fun, but, were I to do it again, I would take a day tour or hire a private guide.  We found the relatively new International Museum of Perfume to be extremely difficult to navigate and not very self-explanatory.  We had much more fun and got more information at the Gallimard workshop in town.  Fragonard and Molinard, the other great names of French perfume, are also handsomely represented with their own boutiques and treasures.  There were several pieces of old distillery equipment on display.  Flowers were heated in the pot to the right and then the steam was condensed by running it through coils in a bath of cold water on the left to get the essential oil.  Needless to say, much has changed, including the invention of synthetic scents.  I also didn't know that perfume is aged for up to a year before it is sold.

There were also wonderful collections of old perfume bottles and traveling cases in which both scents and other toiletry items could be stored.  Those made in the 17th and 18th centuries were particularly beautiful, worked in fine woods, leathers and glass with gold or silver trim.  On the left is a traveling English toilet case made in the late 18th century from some kind of fish skin, gold, crystal, ivory and agate.

After taking whiffs of perfumes, colognes, soaps and distillation oils, we could hardly smell a thing!  There were many flavors I had not encountered before including fig, whisky and tobacco.  Imagine!


At the end of our day, we visited the Gardens of the International Museum of Perfume, which are located a few kilometers out of town.  The garden contains small plots of almost everything grown to make perfume from fig trees to lavender, but especially old roses (not hybrids).  Smelling them was just like being back in the store smelling the heady perfume they made.

Antibes

Antibes, Old Port and Fort Carré

On the western edge of the Baie des Anges across from Nice, Antibes is another Mediterranean jewel.  Although there are plenty of modern high rise apartments, the old port and the old city are charming, with the Fort Carré (the square fort) looking down over both.  Of course, only the smaller of the big sailing and motor yachts can fit in the old port, which also houses a small fishing fleet.  There's another entire port called the Port Vauban where the big motor yachts tie up.  It is, for the most part, an exhibition of retched excess, but every once in a while there's a beautiful old
wooden ship.

Port Vauban

In the old town, the Cours Masséna has a morning market and there are interesting restaurants and traiteurs (take-aways, but nothing like our notion of what that means) everywhere.  Laura and I found one that specializes in Lyonnais cuisine on the Rue de la République from which we've purchased some wonderful meals.  I'm prejudiced when it comes to the cuisine of Lyon, one of my favorite places in France.

Street scene, Antibes

Walking the streets of the old town is really a treat.  Keep your eyes open for an interesting building or staircase, or an especially cleverly decorated window and you will not be disappointed.

Of course, Antibes is also famous for its Picasso Museum, housed in the old Grimaldi Palace.  The Grimaldis were powerful princes of Genoa during the Italian Renaissance.  Their domaines spread across much of Northern Italy and well into France.  The Grimaldi family rules Monaco to this day.
                                                                                                                     

Grimaldi Palace, Picasso Museum                             

Picasso Museum

Perched on the edge of the sea, this beautiful palace/fortress is a perfect place for a museum. There are not many Picassos inside, but among them are some wonderful pottery pieces and a few paintings.

Courtyard Sculpture, Picasso Museum
Antibes

                                                                                 Otherwise, the museum houses an interesting collection of works by modern artists, including some glorious sculptures of women by the French artist Germaine Richier, which are perched on the edge of the terrace overlooking the sea.  I particularly liked the statue of broken guitars in one of the courtyards.






                                                                   

Vence and St. Paul de Vence

Before I leave Nice behind, at least temporarily, I should mention two restaurants that I highly recommend, both non-starred eateries from the Michelin guide.  I find the Michelin guide infallible for restaurant recommendations.  Yes, the starred ones are excellent and extravagant, but the guide includes restaurants in many price ranges and the professional reviewers do not have all the tics that you often find in TripAdvisor.  Anyway, the two restaurants are:  L'Ane Rouge in the old port area (terrific seafood) and Mon Petit Café, which offers excellent regional cuisine, on rue Grimaldi in the center.

Today was the sort of day that every tourist not on a tour experiences.   Laura and I had rented a car to travel east to Cap Ferrat and left it in a garage not far from our apartment.  We decided that the smart move would be to carry as much as we could to the car, load it, leave the parking, return to the apartment and pick up the rest.  And then... on to our adventures north of the city.

We got to the car (so far, so good), loaded the trunk with what we'd dragged along and then headed for the exit.  Laura suggested that perhaps we should have stopped at a pay station before the exit.  But, of course, we hadn't seen any.  I thought we could pay at the exit.  When we drove up one parking level and discovered a pay station, I tried to pull over out of the traffic in the very narrow exit lane while Laura ran to pay.  Her credit card wouldn't work.  Much time figuring this out.  Then I got out of the car, which was still partially blocking the exit lane, to try my card,  It didn't work either.  Finally a lady in a car behind me refused to drive past, which blocked the passage of several men in cars, all of whom started honking and finally I found a spot into which I could put the car while we figured this out.  Speaking my best French, I asked a lovely couple who happened by whether there was an actual manned station for paying and she directed me up a nearby escalator.  But when we got to the next level, there was no manned station.  When I then asked a man wearing an orange stripped reflective vest where we could find the manned parking station, he sent us in a totally different direction which was, thankfully, the correct one.  I explained our problem, got the ticket payed and went back to the car with Laura.

But our adventure wasn't over.  The minute we left the garage we found ourself in a tremendous traffic jam just as Laura's Google maps program went berserk and kept changing the story of where we were going every several seconds.  {Turn right, no turn left, go straight, wait, turn right... and so on.)  I finally pulled up behind a double parked car, Laura turned off her cell phone and turned it on again and we finally got a set of sane directions, but at that point we were far from our apartment, where some of our bags remained.  Having left our apartment at 10:00, we finally returned at 11:00 (a half hour after our expected departure), grabbed the bags and were further insulted by having the rental company make a stink about our overdue departure, even though nobody had showed up to clean the place.  Never mind... on to Vence.

Du coup, we were terribly late in starting and it took longer than we expected to escape the traffic of Nice and head north to St-Paul-de-Vence, where we discovered a lovely town, lots of shopping and a nice lunch -- but no Matisse Chapel.  Uh oh, that's in Vence itself.  Well, not actually, it's mostly on the way to another little town up in the hills.

As a consolation prize, I bought a lovely sweater and hat (oh la la) in St-Paul-de-Vence and Laura a great skirt.  We had lunch at a La Sierra, a restaurant overlooking hills scattered with extravagant villas and then pushed on, finally arriving at the Matisse chapel, which was well worth all the trouble.

Monet

Monet Chapel

The chapel itself is small, simple, colorful, and peaceful.  I was deeply attracted to this portrait of Monet in the small museum attached to the chapel.
It was the last great work of his life.

But of course, our day of endless tourist troubles wasn't over.  We managed to fight our way through Google directions, traffic and just stupid mistakes to Antibes and a great parking garage near our next apartment, which has a large balcony with lovely views.

Settling in and the gin and tonic that followed were well earned this day.  I had heard about the Riviera's notoriously narrow, steep and winding roads.  I hadn't quite counted on local driving customs:  wide turns around blind corners, breathtaking speed and motorcycles that buzz about everywhere, passing at speed through any narrow opening.  It made driving quite a challenge.  Laura remained calm throughout; me, not so much.

Old Nice

Place Masséna

Café Scene, Old Nice

With the rain gone and the sun shining, Wednesday was our day to wander around le Vieux Nice (Old Nice).  Tucked between Place Maséna and the Baie des Anges, it is a lovely quarter with a daily (except Monday) flower and produce market.  We left without breakfast and found a café in the middle of the action for a real French breakfast (bread, butter, jam, coffee and pain au chocolat!).  What could be better?  The flowers were gorgeous, the produce was tempting and the atmosphere was exciting.  Lots of wonderful shops to wander into as well.

One of the many beaches at Nice

Promenade des Anglais

Then it was time to enjoy the Quai des Etats-Unis and the Promenade des Anglais, the long pedestrian walkway that lies between the town and the beach.  Plenty of people were already soaking up the rays or sitting in chairs just taking it all in, even though the temperature was a bit cool.  After our busy drive yesterday, it was a pleasure to move at a slower pace.

During our stay in Nice, we've used our apartment for relaxing evening meals taken home from the wonderful prepared foods at the Monoprix near our apartment, but we've also enjoyed two excellent (though un-starred) Michelin restaurants.  L'Ane Rouge (The Red Donkey) is a wonderful fish restaurant in the Old Port (Vieux Port) section of Nice.  Laura and I shared a starter salad with foie gras than she had mackerel with strawberries and I had sea bream with zucchini.  They were all wonderful dishes.  Closer to our apartment was Mon Petit Café, where we shared zucchini blossom stuffed with cod and potato, followed by tartare of sea bream, then tuna with tapenade and finally a café gourmand.  All breathtaking.  These Michelin restaurants have no stars, just a 'fork' or two, their prices are utterly reasonable, including wine, and we treasured every bite.

Our next destination:  St-Paul-de-Vence, Vence and then Antibes.      
                                                                       

Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild

Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild

The Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild is one of the jewels of the Riviera and it lived up to its reputation during our visit yesterday.  It was built in the Renaissance style at the beginning of the 20th century by Baroness Beatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild.  At the age of 19 she married the then 35-year-old Maurice Ephrussi, brother of the collector of the netsuke figures made famous in the memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes.  The marriage was not a successful one as Maurice was addicted to gambling and when the couple separated in the early years of the 20th century, Beatrice built this stunning palace at Cap Ferrat on the Riviera and surrounded it with amazing gardens and fountains.


















The fountains "play" every 20 minutes accompanied by classical music.  It is wonderful to see a fountain dance to Tchaikovsky or keep time with Mozart.  There's not so much as a lily pad out of place.  And the same holds true in all the other gardens, each with a theme, that surround the central fountains.  The Stone Garden turned out to be full, not of rocks, but of bits of ancient masonry (upper right).  The Japanese Garden was elegant and simple.  The plantings everywhere were absolutely gorgeous.  This is definitely the perfect month to appreciate the many perfections of this magnificent piece of property.  I just couldn't take enough pictures.

The interiors were beautifully crafted.  Not much furniture left, but collections of gorgeous porcelain and many wonderful fabrics, especially from China.  There was an elegance about the place that was never overdone, never in poor taste.  I wish I could have met the Baroness.  She must have been something!  She certainly made an astonishing gift to France when she donated the entire estate to the Institute de France before her death in the 1930s.


Although it was late in the day (one can easily spend an entire day there), Laura and I said a reluctant good-bye and drove on the Eze, a medieval hill village, also a must-see on many lists.  I found it a disappointment.  A tourist trap as almost all are these days with winding streets full of souvenir shops and a ruined castle on top.  It has been creatively turned into a garden for succulent plants and a few very nice modern sculptures, but after the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, it seemed meagre indeed.  The real prize were the stunning views over Cap Ferrat and the Mediterranean.

Cap Ferrat

Can't Get Enough of that Wonderful Stuff

Le Kimono Rouge, 1893

It may seem sometimes that I do nothing but go to museums when I am in Europe.  And I suppose there is some truth to that.  I walk around a lot and enjoy the cafés and restaurants, poking into shops and people watching, most of which is not very interesting to write about.  But it is also true that when I first return, I am like someone dying of thirst for art.

On Friday, my day of recuperation after the flight, I made a beeline for the Petite Palais where an exhibit of Dutch painters in Paris, 1789-1914 was on the verge of closing.  This time the line for those without tickets wasn't too long and I got in to see a very interesting collection of works by Van Gogh, van Dongen, Mondrian, and several others of whom I'd never heard.  Among my favorites was this lovely painting of a woman in a red kimono by George Breitner.

Zadkine, Head of a Woman

After a little nap, I met my friend Hollis Palmer, who is spending three months in Paris and having a grand time.  We went to the Zadkine, a small museum devoted to a single artist, like the Maillol, and run by the City of Paris in Zadkine's old studio next to his house, 100 bis rue d'Assas on the south side of the Luxembourg Gardens.  Ossip Zadkine was a cubist sculptor who emigrated to Paris in 1910.  I loved the spaces in the museum and its lovely garden.  His sculptures are really interesting.  He used wood a lot.  I thought this one had particularly lovely lines.

Matisse Museum, Nice

Letting no grass grow under my feet, it was off to the Gare de Lyon on Saturday morning for the train to Nice where I met my friend Laura Walker.  Laura found a really nice apartment for us not far from the Old Town and the Place de Masséna, which is the center of the downtown area.  On Sunday, with rain threatening, we decided to visit the museums we most wanted to see, starting with the Matisse Museum.

Matisse Museum Entrance

Mme.  Matisse

Nice

One is greeted at the ticket counter with the wonderful bright floral design above.  There are, of course, lots of examples of his work and some terrific designs for other pieces, often several of the same subject, layering color and complexity as he worked along.  One of my favorite drawings was one of Mme Matisse (left) done in about 1905 at the height of the Fauve period with slashes of bright color highlighting a very simple line drawing.  Indeed, there were bright slashes of color absolutely everywhere.





The Chagall Museum houses primarily his large Biblical works.  I particularly liked this rose window, so simple and elegant.  He was a man both deeply religious and deeply educated about religion and the symbolism in these paintings is stunning.  The audio guide is particularly helpful in that regard.

Russian Cathedral, Nice

Finally, Laura and I stopped by the Russian Cathedral, supposedly the most beautiful outside Russia.  It is indeed a beautiful building in a stunning setting and the interior is full of gold and silver icons (no photos allowed) covered with beads, pearls and jewels.  Well worth a visit.

More or less rained out on Monday.  Enjoyed the rest!

Lulu's Back in Town

I just arrived in Paris today.  A short respite to catch my breath and get over jet lag before I take the train to Nice on Saturday.  I'm meeting my friend Laura Walker there for a 12-day road trip on the Riviera.  I've been warned about the twisty roads that I'll be driving, and just hope we manage not to turn into Thelma and Louise!

For this short stay in Paris, I chose a hotel, the Prince de Condé on the rue de Seine, just a block away from the apartment I occupied for 18 months in 2016-17 (hard to imagine it was that long ago).  Air France and Delta are slowly unwinding their partnership, so I flew on Air France today -- a good flight and only a few minutes late.  No strikes at the airport, thank goodness, although this is the season for labor actions in France.

Luigi's

It was wonderful to walk around my old neighborhood.  I had dinner at Luigi's on the rue de Buci.  Totally bummed out to start with that my favorite Traiteur had been replaced, but this is a charming Italian restaurant with a good bar and a quite decent kitchen that is still finding its feet.  I plan to revisit it and you should try it too.

On my way back to the rue de Seine, I passed my favorite jazz band that always seems to be on the streets somewhere in St.-Germain at this time of year.  They were playing "Lulu's Back in Town", a tune I learned from the Ukulele Band at the Evergreen State College, thanks to its leader and the college's President, Les Purce, who refashioned the lyrics as a tribute to the Oyster Olympics, which features the college's mascot, the geoduck, among other mollusks.  Made me feel right at home -- in more ways than one!

Walking back to the hotel, I passed La Palette on the corner of rue de Seine and rue Jacques Callot, right across the street from my old apartment (sorry for the lousy picture).  Happy memories!

Just so you know, Karen's back in town!