All in Travel

Street

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Paris street musicians always have something interesting to say.  This trio was playing straight-ahead gypsy jazz (Irving Berlin's Dancing Cheek to Cheek in the movie Top Hat) as shoppers in the Marais walked and sometimes scooted by.  Lovely.

Cubism

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Picasso's cubism can be viewed as a reaction to the Impressionists.  While they focused on brush strokes, he focused on volume.  This photograph was made from the third floor of the Picasso Museum in  Paris.  The thick and wavy glass, together with all of its imperfections, account for the abstraction.  Some of the photographs that I made while visiting the museum are reflections in plexiglass-glass display cases of the views from the windows.  The building was just as interesting as the collections and exhibits that it houses.

Monochrome

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The afternoon sun can create such pleasure and simultaneously such danger.  Some of my favorite movies are from Jean-Pierre Melville and Jules Daassin--Le Doulos, Le Deuxieme Souffle, Le Flambur, and Riffi.  

In actuality, this photograph was made in Frank's Gehry's building for the Fondation Louis Vuitton.  

 

Whirlwind

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Friday night one week before Christmas, we walked from the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, down the Av. des Champs-Élysées, through the Christmas Market (before the Berlin truck incident), through the Louvre, down and the Rue de Rivoli, and through the Marais, until we stopped at Benedict for dinner seated at the bar.  It seemed like the entire city was out walking, shopping, and eating.  Nothing says Paris quite like the Eiffel Tower and the traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile.  

Expat

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it came as no surprise when I stumbled on an empty cafe displaying the album cover for Dexter Gordon's A Swinging' Affair.   The album was recorded in 1962 by the late Rudy Van Gelder, but it was released in 1964 when Gordon had taken up residence in Paris as an expat.

Photographer

Juno Beach in Jupiter, Florida offered some excellent photographic opportunities, as this photographer learned as she photographed surfers in the afternoon.

We had talked about traveling to Portugal for at least 15 years, often as possible winter destination.  Like everyone else, we always seemed to go elsewhere--Paris, London, Rome, Vienna, Prague, Istanbul, Madrid, and Moscow, among others.  I can't say that was a mistake--each  is a worthwhile destination--but so is Portugal.