Postcards from Paris

Boots - $4,874

Boots - $3,950, Bag - $3,290, Shoes - $1,572

Gucchi Mannequin Murder

A Bargain at $5,271

Eiffel Tower - Where's Waldo?

What Can One Say About Paris?

Marty and I just returned from a long weekend in Paris. Having only visited Paris a few times as a tourist, it’s hard to say anything about Paris without sounding pretentious, boring or simply ridiculous. I thought, however, you might be interested in some of the things other people have said about Paris (from www.brainyquote.com and thinkexist.com). (The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the blogger or her sponsor.)

The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi.
Fred Allen

I stayed three weeks in Paris, fell in love with the city, and decided that I was born to live in Paris.
Ed Bradley

Paris, a city of gaieties and pleasures, where four-fifths of the inhabitants die of grief.
Nicolas de Chamfort

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
Ernest Hemingway

I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle.
James Weldon Johnson

I've been to Paris France and I've been to Paris Paramount. Paris Paramount is better.
Ernst Lubitsch

In Paris, it used to feel like you were living in a museum. As beautiful as it was, it's still limited. But here you have just everything.
Isaac Mizrahi

I used to live in Paris, but I left because youth culture doesn't really exist there.
Marc Newson

In Paris, one is always reminded of being a foreigner. If you park your car wrong, it is not the fact that it's on the sidewalk that matters, but the fact that you speak with an accent.
Roman Polanski

Paris ain't much of a town.
Babe Ruth

I loved Paris more than any other place I had ever known.
Gloria Swanson

In Paris, questions of race or color are not considered - a man's professional skill and social qualities are fairly and ungrudgingly recognized.
Henry Ossawa Tanner

In Paris, you learn wit, in London you learn to crush your social rivals, and in Florence you learn poise.
Virgil Thomson

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.
Friedrich Nietzsche

A city (Paris) where great ideas perish, done to death by a witticism.
Honore de Balzac

Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and, in this, hasn't changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.
John Berger

Here’s my personal favorite:

In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
Mark Twain

Postcards from Pau

Map from Wikipedia

This weekend Marty and I spent a lovely spring day in the town of Pau enjoying its spectacular view of the Pyrénées and its festive Carnival celebration. The Carnival parade, with its elaborate and colorful costumes and riotous music, was the most fun parade I have ever seen. It seemed like the entire town showed up in costume for this family-friendly event. Knowing you all would have enjoyed being there, I took some pictures of the parade for you (below).

Pau’s most famous son is King Henri IV, France’s most popular king who was born in Pau in 1533. He was an unusual king in that he actually demonstrated concern for his subjects and is famous for having said something to the effect that everyone in his kingdom should be able to afford a chicken in their pot at least every Sunday. Raised a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism in order to secure his throne and is said to have quipped that “Paris is well worth a mass.” He didn’t forget his Protestant roots, however, and issued the Edict of Nantes to secure Protestant rights in this otherwise Catholic country. His message of religious tolerance was truly radical in its day.

The Carnival King of Pau, "Sent Pancard" (Fat Belly), however, is slightly less respectable than King Henri IV as he represents all the flaws and calamities of the world. Each year he returns to Pau during Carnival to attempt to recapture his throne. During a tribunal at the end of the Carnival parade Sent Pancard was condemned to burn. The tribunal was actually conducted in Occitan, a language that was widely spoken in regions of southern France, Monaco, Spain and Italy.

Occitan is known as Langue d'oc because the word “yes” in Occitan is “oc.” In contrast, the Langue d’oϊl, were a group of languages spoken in northern France that used the word “oϊl” for “yes.” The word “oϊl” eventually changed to “oui” in French, which is the best known of Oϊl languages. The use of Occitan declined precipitously, particularly after the French Revolution when local languages were viewed as a threat to the French Republic. Until the beginning of the 20th century there were many local languages, like Occitan, spoken in France. It is estimated that as few as half a million people in France speak Occitan today.

Interestingly, the street signs in the central part of Toulouse are in both French and Occitan. Evelyn, my somewhat cynical French teacher, says this is for the benefit of tourists. I must confess that until today when I was looking up information on Occitan, I had assumed that these street signs were in Spanish. Similarly, while listening to the tribunal of Sent Pancard after the Carnival parade (before reading the carnival brochure that explained that the proceedings were in Occitan) I naively asked Marty why they were conducting the tribunal in Italian. The more generous among you may concede that Occitan, being a Romance language, could quite reasonably be confused with Spanish and Italian, but I suspect that mostly I have proved (once again) that there are many ways to be a dumb foreigner.

The King, Sent Pancard (Fat Belly)

Where's Waldo?