A few pictures

How about some photos of my trip to France? I don't have many from Paris (besides photos of old documents), but I do have a couple...

Look, it's Pierre Bourdieu's grave at Pere Lachaise cemetery:




On my free day in Paris with R, we stopped in at Printemps department store to sit in the restaurant under the stained glass, Art Deco dome, drinking wine and eating ice cream in the middle of the afternoon...such a thing you only do on vacation. R took 30 photos of us sitting there. Here's an obscured one of me that gives a sense of the place:



She began to experiment with taking pictures of the mirrored tabletop...still-lifes, as it were, of my wineglass, her coffee cup, empty ice cream bowls - and the stained glass:



On the night before we left Paris, we had a walk through Montmartre so I could locate the Adolph Loos building, and we took a series of photos of architectural detailing on one particularly stunning street.



Then we travelled to Lyon, where I lived seven years ago. I lived there because I loved it - I love it more than Paris. I think it is the city I've fallen hardest for of any I've ever been to. I'm not quite sure why it's such an under-appreciated and forgotten city, given how fantastic, how beautiful, it is. I hated the small French city where I was studying during a year of my PhD, so I moved to Lyon. It was an emotional experience, a little, going back to this place. Mostly good. Here is part of the Roman ruins - the city was an important Roman one called Lugdunum 2000 years ago. These ruined amphitheatres take my breath away, I must say.



Oh, there I am, looking out contemplatively over Lyon, with its red-roofed white buildings...the very thing that gives it the aerial quality that gets me so...



Here's a hilarious dog sleeping in the upstairs window of this restaurant in Old Lyon.



This is the window of Bernachon on Mother's Day (on the 25th in France). Bernachon is considered to be one of the finest chocolatiers in the world. When I lived in Lyon, I happened to live ONE BLOCK AWAY FROM IT. Naturally, we purchased chocolate there. There was an incredible lineup that day, of folks buying cakes and pastries for mothers, presumably.



And these!!! We ate these in Old Lyon. They were like drugs...Oh my god, this may have topped my list of lifetime pastry experiences, it was so good. I worship it: