entertainment week

that's how this week is going and is scheduled to go---

last Saturday we went to a concert by Roger McGuinn (formerly of the Byrds)- he came on stage playing his 12 string electric and singing My Back Pages and the concert zoomed from there- he had some fabulous stories and some wonderful songs (most of which we knew but there were a few new things to us) and was clearly having such a good time himself that one could not fail to be infected by his good humor.  Phil said it was on of the best concerts he had ever been to.  I also found it very entertaining.

last night my bud Jennifer - who came in from Denver - and friend Mick and I went to the opera to see the Mikado.  I had gotten tickets to this opera because Stephanie Blythe was singing and it was worth it to hear her amazing voice and see her interpret her character with such gusto.  The opera (really operetta) left me somewhat cold as other than her character I couldn't have cared less for any other players.  but as always the staging was fun to see.  Laure also had tickets for the same night and stopped by to see us during intermission.

tomorrow night we have tickets for The Importance of Being Earnest and Friday I have another opera (A Masked Ball) which also has Stephanie Blythe singing.  Yea!

so since it is the holiday season, we can do the twelve days of ... entertainment! - we have in one week:

4 dinner engagements
2 operas
1 concert
1 play
and 1 lunch date

if I move it to twelve days I get lost - so we will have to stick with seven LOL

here are some photos that remind me of winter and the holidays

top- Salzburg Austria - ornaments made of painted eggs
middle - Innsbruck Austria - skier dolls in a store window
bottom - Red Square in Moscow in the afternoon sun

streaming thoughts

led from my husband commenting last night that if I wanted to attract people to Paris I should pick more enticing photos than the ones I posted.  LOL- I was thinking from there about that photo I posted of the head in hand.  I think it is sort of a modern day "thinker" but it could just be a heavy day for the head and he had to hold himself in place with the hand... I guess the interpretations could go on and on - that's art after all... in the eye of the beholder (oh wait, that was beauty- wasn't it? -LOL)

anyway I started thinking about how the location is a lovely park on top of horrible dumpy dark mall underground where Les Halles (the main market in Paris) once stood.  what a loss to move a market to build a mall.   that took me to thinking how this is not an unique structure - we also saw the same thing- unattractive underground mall (well actually IMHO there is no such thing as an attractive mall underground or other wise, but I digress) in Moscow.

we had been staying at Le Meridien right across from Red Square and when we walked over we found there was a hidden mall under a quite lovely green space.  I don't have any photos of either of the malls, but I did capture a shot of some of the local "mall rats" in Moscow - probably not all that different from our own.

that led me to thinking that it is actually quite a nice thing to hide the malls someplace - especially in urban areas of some historic note.  last time we were in Paris and were walking home to our hotel in the 6th from the area of Les Halles where the head and hand sculpture is located, we came across this establishment which made me think of the Maltese Falcon or such.

and while I wouldn't quite consider it representative of Paris - it did have appeal for someone who read every Nancy Drew in grade school and then moved on to Marlowe and Spade and others of the hard boiled genre.

BTW- the smoked meat quest was quite successful and while we were at it we located some macarons that were amazingly French in style although the presentation was not quite as pictured below (from the last Paris trip in March)

we enjoyed them so much we will no doubt return for more in December as we are expecting guests from Europe and these would be a superb to serve with tea of coffee.