Feb. 14. Love is in the air, that’s what the calendar says: courtly love, big heart love, flower love, filial love, parental love, fraternal love, sisterly love, lost love, Facebook love (well, like), commercial love, bisou love, oh la la love, etc.
1. Here’s one for you: Graffiti love, otherwise known as love locks on the bridges of Paris. You can share in that love in an audio-slideshow featuring beautiful photography by Joe Wilkins and atmospheric music and lyrics by LaRae Raine, a France Revisited production found here.
2. Here about street love? Or at least street talk. Here’s a vignette entitled “Paris Street Talk: Merry, the Mural and the Pisser (la Fresque et la Pisseuse).” Enjoy its romance, or anti-romance, as the case may be, right here.
3. Springtime love? I don’t want to get your hopes too high (even though that’s what Valentine’s Day is all about) but the cold wave broke today in Paris, giving way to a cool rain that is likely to stay with us for the next two weeks, so spring can’t be far behind, right? And with it will come thoughts of green and historical excursions into the countryside. That’s why I wrote “Beyond Versailles,” an article that leads you into the Chevreuse Valley, to the Chateau de Breteuil, to the unusual and romantic hotel in the ruins of the Abbey of Vaux de Cernay, and to the presidential Chateau de Rambouillet and its sheep and forest. Go beyond Versailles by reading here.
I can feel it. Can you?
Lots of it,
Gary