It's addictive...

I am addicted to chocolate, I am addicted to jogging, I am addicted to audiobooks, I am addicted to The Crown, I am addicted to my computer, I am addicted to travel and... I am addicted to the Eiffel Tower! I just can't get enough of it!

Debilly Footbridge at night

View from the Galeries Lafayette rooftop

Sparkling beyond the Musée de l'Homme

Enjoying the sunrise from Place Chaillot

Secret tea spot in the Musée de l'Architecture 

Romantic Trocadero

La France renaissante on the Bir-Hakeim bridge

Wall of Peace at the Champ de Mars

View from Thomas Jefferson Square

Not a cloud in the sky

Strolling down Rue Saint Dominique

Too wet to walk... let's grab a cab!

Lunch date at the Café du Musée de l'Homme

Haggling the price of a souvenir while walking back at night

Love is in the air

Fun in the sun!

Reflections in the carpark along Boulevard Delessert 

A lazy winter sunrise

A late evening jog around Champ de Mars

A Sunday morning jog through the Jardins du Trocadero 

Greek warrior by François Devault on the Pont d'Iena

A glimpse of La Grande Dame de Fer from rue de Passy

The good and the bad of Paris

After having managed to be in Paris a whole seven days over the past five weeks, it was time to get my head back in the game. A freezing cold week with clear blue skies (not a single drop of rain!) tempted me into long runs through the Bois de Boulogne, lunches with girlfriends, exhibits of modern architecture and museums with classic painters, a Chinese show, and dinners entre amis to top it all off.

This is the glory of Paris... because when it's good, it's grandiose, simply unbeatable... ! 

We'll just conveniently ignore the fact that yesterday the French riot police clashed with uniformed firefighters protesting in Paris against their working conditions and demanding more pay. In extraordinary scenes they were physically fighting each other using teargas and water cannons. How absurd?!? 

Chinese New Year on Rue Faubourg Saint Honoré

Reflections of the Eiffel Tower in Passy

Admiring Neapolitan art at the Petit Palais

Time out for a coffee

A walk through the Bois de Boulogne to reach the Fondation Louis Vuitton

Paris by night: mingling with the tourists

A special flower delivery

Poulette, a new discovery near Etienne Marcel

Exotic chocolate selection at La Grande Epicerie

A jog around the lake on a cloudy Sunday

A trendy night out

Bonne nuit Paris

It's just an illusion...

An invitation to the Musée de l'Illusion popped up on my facebook feed... that's weird I have not heard of this museum before. A bit of googling confirms it has opened just one month ago. There is no excuse I gather my girlfriends and we are off to explore.

Turns out it is not really a museum rather a few rooms scattered over two floors hidden under a scaffolding in the 1st arrondissement. Our first impression is a rather spartan space but as we go along with the interactive experiences and shoot the photos we are invited to take from a specific place in each section the fun gets better and better.

The parcours exercised our little grey cells by providing a scientific and rational explanation for what our eyes could neither explain nor understand. Every corner of the museum taught us extraordinary things about our vision, our perception and the functioning of our intellect. The goal was to discover why our eyes perceive things that are incomprehensible to our brain.

My first is surreal, my second is as educational as it is playful and my third is unique curiosity. Who am I?..... An optical illusion!

Of the three of us, I was the only one brave enough to jump into an illusion created by the Vortex Tunnel that at first was fun but then drove me slightly crazy as I made my way forward stepping through what seemed a slowly rotating cylinder. What began as a light-headed sensation turned into a real struggle – and yet the surface was completely stable and flat!

For over an hour our reliance on senses were tricked and as we entered the fascinating world of illusions we were confused and amazed... and ultimately also educated!

It's all about deceiving your eyes and entertaining the mind! Definitely worth a try but be sure to visit at a time without too many people, and take your camera with you.

Having fun in the smart playroom

Vortex Tunnel: more challenging than I thought!!!

Can you see him?

Feeling slightly sick looking down into the void.

It's all about illusions!

The cultural diversity of an insect hotel

On my mornings runs I have noticed more and more of these insect hotels popping up in France and in Switzerland. 

If you are a gardener by hobby and a nature enthusiast by heart, chances are that you are already familiar with the concept of insect hotels. Offering a sanctuary to beneficial insects, especially pollinators, they are considered to be the urban solution to declining population of beneficial insects in human environments due to habitat loss, pollution and abuse of pesticides.

Looking at them closer, I could not resist noticing the difference between the Swiss and the French construction depicted via an insect hotel... and then you wonder why we keep on having water infiltrations in our Parisian flat?!? 

Mind you, I ponder who's inhabitants are happier? The orderly, well-protected, insulated Swiss or the rather messy, disengaged, relentless French?

Charlotte Perriand, pioneer of modernity

When your BFF comes to town the best place to take her is the Fondation Louis Vuitton. It is an outing that combines trendiness, beauty, art, culture, nature and food all in one!

Little did I know about Charlotte Perriand, a French architect and designer, but that wouldn't really matter because the magnificent building is so impressive whatever is inside will be just fine.

Boy was I in for a surprise... who knew that this multitalented artist was Le Corbusier's sidekick... or shall I say his famous chair was actually designed by a woman named Charlotte Perriand? Her work aimed to create functional living spaces in the belief that better design helps in creating a better society. Her approach to design included taking in the site and appreciating it for what it was.

Charlotte Perriand wanted to work for Le Corbusier and pursue serial production and low-cost housing. She was inspired by Le Corbusier's books, because she thought his writings that criticized the decorative arts aligned with the way she designed. When she applied to work at Le Corbusier's studio in October 1927, she was famously rejected with the reply "We don't embroider cushions here." A month later, Le Corbusier came across her work while visiting the Salon d'Automne, which convinced him to offer her a job in furniture design.

At Le Corbusier's studio, she was in charge of their interiors work and promoting their designs through a series of exhibitions. Perriand described the work as being highly collaborative between Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and herself; they were "three fingers on one hand."

I spent three hours strolling in and out of gallery halls exploring the links between art, architecture and design by a pioneer of modernity, a leading figure of the twentieth century design, who contributed to the definition of a new art de vivre.

Charlotte Perriand truly invented a New World as the exhibition's title promised. It was a pleasure to be taken on the journey of her long, productive, fascinating life.

Recognise the chair and the chaise-longue in front of Fernand Leger's painting?

Charlotte adored Isamu Noguchi's lanterns

A miniature model of Charlotte's world

Snapshot of the past

Avangarde, timeless and so up-to-date

A page out of Charlotte Perriand's scrapbook

The embodiment of Charlotte's vision of a “synthesis of the arts”

Perfect layout for today's chambre de bonne on the 6th floor!

How small, simple and functional can a kitchen be?

My absolute favourite: "Le refuge tonneau" is a

transportable mountain igloo with the interior space of 8m2 built in 1938!

The artist's concepts were in high demand and she worked on many projects from ski resorts to student housing.

Charlotte Perriand put into practice the concept of prefabrication where all components were prefabricated and organized around a tubular steel frame. 

The refuge camp for 6 people had everything you needed to stay toasty on a cold winter night.

Charlotte Perriand looks like quite a character! 

In 1940 the artist sails for Japan where she has been appointed as an advisor on industrial design to the Ministry of Trade and Industry. The teahouse she designed in 1993 in the garden of UNESCO’s global headquarters in Paris, is an affectionate homage to the ones she had visited in Japan.

"La maison au bord de l'eau" never saw physical execution un til the LV foundation decided to give it a go. The plans for "the house by the water" were first drafted over eighty years ago, in 1934.

The inside living space... 

... and the original sketch by Charlotte Perriand.