I had been seeing posters in the metro advertising an exhibit at the Grand Palais of giant reliefs used since King Louis XIV until the late 1800′s so it was very clear about the layout of land and villages for defense-a three dimentional representation of domain. It was really interesting and I’m glad I got there before it closed as it ends this Sunday.

The Grand Palais, built in 1900 for a world’s fair, as you exit the metro.

The sign out front.

A look at the interior when you enter.

This shows a map of the Alps of France. Giant fortresses were built to try and prevent invasions.

Here’s a relief map showing an area with several fortresses and what they call the great wall of the Alps going up the ridge of a mountain.

I was amazed at the detail. Every house in each village was there as was every tree and field. A sign said that this particular relief had over 125,000 tree models of about ten different kinds of trees. It was important to know the landscape when building defense systems. Once man could fly and maps could be made these were no longer needed.

I wanted to show how enormous these relief maps were so show people around one. They had giant mirrors put up in some places too so you could get a good look at them.

How was your Valentine’s Day? Maurice got me a really pretty, delicate heart bracelet. I was surprised as I was just expecting flowers. We had to go to a very late Dr’s appointment (7 PM) and as we were leaving Maurice said to the nurse there that it was too bad she had to work on Valentine’s Day and she said it was no problem as she didn’t have a Valentine anyway. Then he told me that he heard on the radio that there are 6 million people in France without someone to share Valentine’s Day-however they know-that which seemed like a huge, sad number of which I have been a part in my life. We had to change metro lines on the way home and got out on one point and went into the first bistro we came to which turned out to be a good choice although I couldn’t eat the potatoes still being on my diet. My steak while tasty was rather tough which is often the case in France. I’m guessing that’s the case because they don’t give the cows hormones and while that’s good, I sure do miss those incredible tender steaks in the States. For dessert Maurice had this for dessert:

A protiferole (sorry about the light), It’s one of my favorite French desserts: a cream puff, vanilla ice cream and hot fudge sauce. I didn’t have any of this either.

We saw this sign at the metro stop on the way home. I don’t know if it was the prelude to a coming advertisement or if it was put up to cover another advertisement by the people who oppose all of the advertisements in the metro stops-and there are many. The men who put those up have a full time job and you are always seeing new ones. In any case, I liked the sentiment and the bright happy color. It means: Look at the Sky.

Well, Valentine’s Day is almost here. We don’t have any plans to eat out for a romantic dinner. It would be nice to get flowers-I always like that. On the way to pick up my much needed new glasses-how I have missed them-I saw a couple of windows with St Valentine’s Day decorations.

I love tulips. These were displayed interestingly with the leaves. I don’t know if you take them off when you get home or not.

Nice display in the window of a florist.

Just look at that fabulous blue sky behind a local church. It’s nice not to have gray skies but it is still really cold, about 17 degrees with windchill on top of that. I saw on my weather forecast for Paris that the temps will get in the 40′s next week but, of course, with showers. I’m not going to complain though after the rough two weeks of cold we’ve had.

The two columns at Nation. I just liked the light and, of course, the blue sky.

It is slowly starting to warm up here in Paris. I’m so happy. It actually got up to 30 degrees F. yesterday and although it still felt cold outside, it was definitely warmer. There was snow on the ground two days ago, and we may get a snow flurry on Sunday but by next week my weather reports says the highs will be in the 40′s which makes me very happy. I’ve been out a bit but only took some videos so that’s all I’ve got.

A very short video I took in my local Monoprix showing all of the yogurt for sale. There is also a look at the cheese but this wasn’t all of it. There is also packaged cheese in another long refrigerated unit. I was getting some strange looks so I stopped.

Something else we did, the day of the snow, was go to a tennis tournament called the GDF Suez Open where top women in professional tennis play. We usually go each year. I like women’s tennis much more than men’s as you don’t have those sometimes four or five hour games. When the players for the match were announced it was rather spectacular with rock star lights and music. I have a bit of Maria Sharapova playing trying to capture that noise she makes when she hits the ball. Maurice and I saw her at the qualifying event at Rolland Garros when she just came on the scene. She was making that noise even then. We watched for a while and she was losing and we went to another court but kept hearing her play and when we went back she had made a come back and won the game. She has a lot of spirit.

I met a friend up on Montmartre the other day. It was so cold that basically we hurried from the metro to the restaurant and back again after lunch but I did get a few photos.

Seen in the window of a French clothing shop. It seemed strange to see a sign in English and I wonder how many French people “get it”.

A rather famous boulangerie is found up there.

This is why: best baguette in Paris in 2011. I didn’t buy one as I didn’t want to carry it home on the metro but I should have.

They have lots of other goodies in there too. Part of the reason Paris is so famous-its pastries.

P.S. Some time ago a lady wrote me about a photo I took in Provence with a sign saying “Bonjour”. I can no longer find her email but if you are reading this, that photo was not in high definition and could only be made into a small photo, not a poster sized photo.

As I keep complaining, it is really cold here. Maurice and I went to the movies and afterwards did a little walk in Bercy Park. In the Spring and Summer it is full of plants and flowing water. This day there were just some either frozen plants, or brown and dormant ones, and frozen water.

There’s something pretty about ice. It looked thick enough to stand on which I wasn’t tempted to try.

I wonder if these water reeds (cat tails?) will survive this cold weather?

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Another pond.

And a closeup of those reeds.

“ And look: it snowed on Sunday. This is a view from out apartment window. Of course, Paris didn't have near as much snow as the rest of Europe and Eastern Europe. I've seen some incredible photos. We were lucky.