There any place more magical? Even the city hall – the Hôtel de Ville – looks like a castle! The Metro stops all have grand signage which fascinated me. My favorite was the Art Deco ones in Pigalle. 

 This was drawn quickly with a pentel brush pen. It overflowed onto my metro stop page.  Painted w French  ochre walls and Inathrodone on the black doors. The roof is a random gray that was on my palette. Aka leftovers. 

As I was painting this it reminded me of Ludwig Bemelman’s Madeline stories a childhood favorite of mine. Those books were the first time I remember hearing of Paris and France as a small child of five. I used to sit on the floor of my bedroom and read them. 

The drawing was actually from memory drawn the day we went there. 

The Metro is a little intimidating the first time you ride. It all moves so fast. Zip zip the train stops and started. Fully automated with nobody to ask questions. What if you end up in the wrong place. Our guide Christina explained it’s mysteries to us and after that we had no problems hopping on the metro.

 Oops except the one time we could not find the stop to get on it and ended up taking a pedicab backup to the boat. That was the day we walked nine miles so we were ready or at least I was!! We even asked a mounted police lady where it was and she told us two more miles!  Bytw she was wrong! It was on the corner nearby. It just didn’t have the fancy signs we were used to looking for. Who knew they had plain signs too? 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret who is babysitting tonite xxx