April in Paris ...

Thanks to friends Roy and Marj we spent a week in Paris with a day trip to Brussels for lunch.

While Susan swam I wandered the streets shooting.

 Then we went to see Eileen Gray exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou

 from where there are views of construction.

I was trying for the iconic Paris shot but this woman in red kept getting in the way....

An eye-catching display in a hardware store.

Chairman Roger encourages us to try something different - here's what happens when shooting from a bus....

We had never been out to La Defense, the office building complex on the outskirts.  As if the architecture wasn't amazing enough, there's public art too!

 From the new arch you can see Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile.

 A Calder 'stabile', as opposed to one of his 'mobiles'.

My e-books

Just in case you follow the blog more closely than FaceBook I have created e-book version of my Blurb photo books -

http://store.blurb.com/ebooks/pb7a7f1638782ba80ce3c

and

http://store.blurb.com/ebooks/387242-ten-days-with-the-uzbeks

A little history from our Brussels lunch.

The plaque that you can't see over my left shoulder does say "Karl Marx".  When I asked the waiter about it he said "this was Marx' favorite corner; he lived here for three years."  I thought 'Cool!'.

An investigation via Google indicates there is some truth to that .... but not much.  After being kicked out of Germany and France, Marx did live for three years  in Brussels where he  wrote his manifesto   but could not likely have been able to afford to eat in this restaurant often let alone live on the Grand Place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olas29PrYDk

The square is quite impressive, even in the rain, and the lunch was good.  Better historians will sort out who lived where.

After a few glasses I became a bit blurry  .....

Thanks Roy.