le grand palais

visited anish kapoor's exhibition at le grand palais today. every year there's an exhibition in the nave of le grand palais called monumenta - this year kapoor was chosen & ultimately decided to fill the huuuge space with a massive sculpture titled 'leviathan', that kinda looks like a giant ribena blob. 

part of the exhibition is inside the artwork...imagine a huge, echoing, luminescent red dome that almost seems bigger than its exterior (if that's even possible.....). 

kapoor dedicated the work to chinese artist ai weiwei, who's recently been arrested. i saw ai weiwei's 'sunflower seeds' at the tate modern in london, back in april. weiwei's work has a real heart-warming story behind it. you can watch the vid on it here...

the nave is all decked out in art nouveau architecture, with a glass-domed roof - which isn't what you'd expect when you see the more classic stone facade... just opposite is le petit palais (which is still huge), another museum/gallery space.

pont alexandre III joins the two palaces (& the champs-élysées) to the hôtel des invalides. this bridge is one of paris' more fancy ones with a heap of art nouveau lamps & statues of cherubs everywhere. it was built around the same time as le grand palais (1900), so has a similiar kind of architecture.

i've just been to see the new woody allen film 'midnight in paris' and the closing scene was on pont alexandre III. such a surreal feeling to recognise all these places where i've walked & explored! the film's inspired me to get out & see more of paris while i'm here...

S.

the interior of the sculpture

crystal ball?

nothing to say

le petit palais

a fine example of awkward parisian parking

honfleur

still the long weekend, still in deauville - but we decided to take a detour to honfleur for the day. it's a little village near deauville. i'll describe it to you in the same way it was described to me: if you imagine deauville as being the chic 1er arrondissement of paris; honfleur is paris' montmartre equivalent. it is artsy, relaxed & bohemian.

with galleries every which way we looked, it was inevitable that we were going to come home with our arms weighed down with shopping bags. au pair mama picked out a collection of six small prints from a cute gallery called les amoureux. what i wasn't expecting was to come home with a carved & engraved , legit buffalo skull, complete with horns and everything...

we arrived at prime market time (!!), with lanes upon lanes of bustling stalls spider-webbing their way around quai de honfleur. it was made up of both food & clothing parts. first off we wandered through the food part, where the ced's couldn't resist buying several kilo's of cheese (miam!).

further along i found a stall selling really unique jewellery ... -meaning i haven't stumbled across anything like it in any of my other european market adventures.

fell in love with a layered bracelet made of threads of course material, with tiny round silver beads attached haphazardly along it. i would show a picture, but very sad story: couldn't buy it due to a slightly awkward incident of me getting lost sans bag, therefore finding myself without a mobile or wallet.

won't go into how i only found them again 5 hours later...

but hey - all in all, a great weekend getaway. en route à paris!

S.

art gallery where we bought six funky paintings

honfleur market

this is now in the living room...au pair papa couldn't resist