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travel

Postcard #6: In Paris

Autumn light in the Luxembourg Gardens on an October evening. © Erin Zaleski 2012

I finally made it back to Paris after nearly four years of being away.

If I had forgotten how bleak October in Paris can be, the past two weeks  have reminded me.

The morning sky is dark until 8 am and a thick canopy of clouds can linger for days, obscuring the sun and imparting a romantic, melancholy quality to the city the gradually becomes less romantic and more melancholy with each successive gray day. Fortunately, I was so caught up in the intensity of re-immersing myself in the city and reconnecting with old friends that the gloom became an afterthought.

On my last evening, still tipsy from a long, wine-soaked lunch, I stumbled (quite literally) into the Luxembourg Gardens, where the last moments of the day had given way to a blaze of light that was almost jarring.

It was a fitting conclusion to a trip during which dreary moments mingled side by side with florid, intense ones. It was also a reminder that more than two decades since my first trip and after nearly four years away, the city still has the ability to tantalize, seduce and surprise me.

I’ve booked a return trip for the spring. See you there?

Friday photo, Photography

Friday Photo: Traveling Light

Zurich BH 2

“Zurich BH 2” from Izakigur in Switzerland. The light, the tones and the contrast infuse an otherwise ordinary moment at a Zurich train station with both energy and a sense of solitude. Goethe may have called architecture “frozen music,” but this image comes pretty close.

“I love to say that I am ‘denying time,’  and I am ‘following the light,'” the photographer notes in his flickr profile. “Light is the big seducer.”

For more of Izakigur’s impressive work with light and landscapes, visit his flickr stream.

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