We did a tour of Auvers Sur L’Oise the last home of Van Gogh. This is the church that he painted. He painted almost every square inch of this village and the buildings remain untouched.
The steep steps and house are still at the end of the lane behind the inn where he died.
Thanks for reading
Margaret under the weather. Xxx
Happy Thanksgiving. Hope this day finds you celebrating with family and friends!
Sacre Couer
The hippy district of Paris where the painters and writer lived and worked, home of the Moulin Rouge and once upon a time Toulouse Lautrec who loved to paint the dancers.
Sacre Couer dominates the district on top of the highest spot in Paris. It gleams in the sunlight with its very white turrets.
You either have to ride the funicular train or climb these enormous talk stairs to reach Sacre Couer and St Pierre.
Sacre Couer from the Pomidou Center.
The carousel at the base of Sacre Couer
St Pierre sits next to Sacre Couer and is an ancient small pregothic church that was restored in the late 1800s. 
Inside St Pierre.
Market square at Monmartre.
Thanks for reading.
Margaret xxx
To know Paris is as lovely as ever despite those who tried to blow it up.
A random street near the Champs Elusses
Les Invalides
The Eiffel Tower. I do t get tired of looking at it.
Chaps Elysses by rainy nite
In a mob or
Or early morning
Rue d’artois
Quai Greinelle Out our cabins window
Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for more French adventures
Margaret xxx ready to head back to Paris
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Really like this one of our chef Dimitris favorite Patisserie en Conflans. Evidently you have to have a lot of training to be able t use the name Patisserie and have a special pastry chef on staff.
Our first meal in France at L’ Artois on Rue de l’Artois around the corner from our hotel. The food was ok but the host and hostess were trés charmante as was the restaurant.
The Ranville church and cemetery. Love the colors of the flowers combined with the somber tombstones.
Cathedral en Vernon. Did I say I love all the gothic churches? Pregothic ones too.
One of my favorite was St Mclou in Rouen with Notre Dame that Monet painted 28 times in the background. St Mcclou was smaller and just lovely with all its encrustations.
The front of Saint Mcclou. The Rouen Notre Dame looked very similar to Paris Notre Dame.
Thanks for reading
Margaret xxx
Another free download is Photoshop Epxress. Great for doctoring those thousand photos you took on grey days in France. Easy enough that my three year old grandson had fun using it. He loved clicking on the different photo effects and changing the pictures.
Watermill at Bayeux France
Before photoshop express
APanorama shot of the same mill.
Before Photoshop express. Big difference.
Before Photoshop express- taken into the sun. Never a good idea but sometimes the only choice.
Ranville church panorama – dream in photoshop express
Before photoshop express. Late afternoon dark gloomy afternoon.
A lot of fun. Go download it and have fun exploring.
View from the Eiffel Tower on a grey rainy day.
Before pse
Can’t decide which I like better. I think the second one.
Thanks for reading!
Margaret xxx
The Seine is a commercial river shipping via barges from Paris to Honfleur and Le Havre on the Sleeve also known as the English Channel and back again. The barges are huge long shallow draft boats. A car looks minuscule on the deck parked behind the wheel house for the owners use.
Conflans outside of Paris is the barge town because it’s much cheaper to live. Boat homes can be docked five deep in Conflans but you better get along with your neighbors because you might have to cross their boat to get ashore!
Barges get converted to homes and even churches. This is a chapel for barge men in Conflans. It even has stained glass windows and pews.
The variety is amazing. A houseboat.
A barge-You can have a job on it carrying goods from port to port. Industrial barges used to be numerous but are getting fewer and fewer on the Seine.
You can live on them.
You can run tours from them.
And the berths on the quais can be in amazing spots. If u get tired of the view you can always move it!!!
Our personal bateaux the Viking Pride!!
If you’re lucky you might have some swans for neighbors.
Keep them ship shape!
You can carry your car with you.
They line the quais in their infinite variety.
This loaded barge was sailing down river so fast I hardly had time to draw it. Really need to paint it I think. We shall see.
Thanks for reading.
Margaret who might need a houseboat. Xxx
Actually drew most of this while on the bus. Taking notes on what our guide was saying, drawing a sketch of the Bayeux tapestry which was incredible, a view of the French countryside around the D Day landing sites and our lunc in Arrowmanches at the 6 Juin restaurant. Best lunch of the trip. Baguettes to die for and fabulous chicken and of that gateaux. Delicious.
A few things I learned from our guide:
The French call the English Channel Le Manche or the Sleeve. wHo knew?
The trees in France are full of huge balls of mistletoe. When our guide was asked why there was so much she said because in France we keep the mistletoe because we kiss a lot!
Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend. I am in the mountains at a trout farm!
Margaret xxx
 Sketched during our dinner – Could be called “Waiting for the Bill!”
Jean Cocteau’s self portrait
We actually sat below some original Jean Cocteau sketches in a restaurant we ate at called Bouef Sur la Toit. Â I have been meaning to share his sketches with you but the wifi on the boat made it impossible. So today seems like a good day to do it.
Beef on the Roof which was a Paris jazz hot spot of the glitterati called  Les Enfants Terribles back in the 20-40s. Coco Channel was a member of this circle as  were Charlie Chaplin, Arturo Rubenstein, Josephine Baker, Maurice Ravel and Maurice Chevalier, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Albert Camus, Igor Stravinsky to name a few..Bouef launched the careers of  singer Juliet Greco and singer/song writer Charles Trennet.
The restaurant on Rue des Ecoles…call for reservations…great food and music too!
Whimsical  – Three Men in a Tub?? Notice even the great Cocteau made mistakes!!!
 Mistinguett was one of the most successful French performers of her timeÂ
 Coco Channel I thinkÂ
 Another Chanel?
 Probably Chanel????
Very rudementary but I like the lines…and the goat!!! Wonder if hes up on the roof too???
More about Le Bouef Sur La Toit ripped from the menu!!! 
The Canadian D Day cemetery at Bény Sur Mer. It seems appropriate to post it today with the fighting in Paris. War again in France. Our guides grandfather was a French resistance fighter killed by the SS when he was caught.
Today I heard a silly journalist on CNN say Parisians were not used to fighting in their streets. If you asked our guide she would tell you they still remember WW2. Bullet holes from WW2 still pock mark the buildings. The church at Ranville was full of bullet holes and huge chunks of it were missing from WW2 fighting.
🇫🇷 The French remember with three museums to the D Day invasions. This is the Canadian museum at Juno Beach were 5000 Canadians died.
🇫🇷 There’s one at the American invasions site and one at Pegasus Bridges were British paratroopers had to seize a bridge BEFORE the D Day invasion.
🇫🇷Our guide’s grandmother found bodies of 132 Canadian POWs who were murdered and buried in a mass grave in her yard. They still find WW2 bodies routinely in Normandy. So yes they remember!!
I adore Paris and France. Truly one of th most beautiful spots in the world as is the country. Stay tuned while I post more French sketches. Make art not war!!
A few hours after the Paris terror attacks I got two texts from friends in quick succession. Both, in summary, said: ‘I’m angry and sad and can you help me understand?’
Some context: a decade ago I went back to University and studied terrorism. The events of September 11th 2001 had developed into war in Iraq and one line in a book wouldn’t leave me. It read: ‘The world is not working for countless millions of its inhabitants’.
I went back to one of the best departments of World Politics there is. I was taught by some of the most experienced and intelligent academics on this subject. I’m nowhere near their level of understanding, but I know a little bit about terror.
I can tell you about the tactics of Brigate Rosse and Baader-Meinhof and give you the need to know on anti-federal US terrorism in the 90‘s. I…
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Margaret McCarthy Hunt Art 
