Happy

It's been a while since I've written and there is really no time to write now. But I must say I'm happy. I'm as happy as I've ever been.

Now I must go to bed. I'm cooking waffles for 80 in six hours.

Mon grand ami Jillian

Well as much as I hate to ween myself out of my Paris state of mind, there are other things going on these days. In fact there is nothing better than coming back from an amazing trip to Paris and have Jillian Ann arriving a few days later. Très bon! (See, I'm still in Paris in my head.)

I picked Jillian up at the airport at 8:30am on Saturday morning. Always great to see her. We have such a great time when she's here. Talking, shooting, talking, figuring life things out, more shooting. And the results, both photographically as well as personally are always wonderfully rewarding. As we drove back to my place we caught up and told stories about our lives since we last saw each other back in July. More recently, Jillian had performed at Avalon, the huge New York night club with a great musical artist named Keevens. As those things usually go, the performance turned into a party and then moved to another club and Jillian pretty much got on the plane at 7am in NY without sleeping.

So we walked into my place, dropped her bags by the door, and then dropped her on my couch for a few hours. I went out and bought some of her favorite food, (I always seem to be buying food for my favorite women), returned the iGo car, did some laundry and answered email while Jillian attempted to catch up on her sleep. A little after noon I heard some stirring and we picked up the conversation right where we left off before she passed out.

Jillian has spent the last five years of her life creating an amazing music career for herself. I had the pleasure of meeting her a week or so after 9/11 after exchanging emails and portfolios for about a year before that. Since then she's been fiercely and independently writing her music, improving her voice, programming her music demos in her NY space and using the internet to create a massive following. Since she has the lucky genes that managed to give her both stunning looks and talent, she's been able to pay for her recording gear, her musicians and engineers with her modeling.

I certainly consider myself fortunate to have her as a muse and a close friend. She's one of those people that has really been a positive influence both in my photography and perhaps even more importantly in my personal life. She's vegan, which meant for the first visits a few years ago, I would go from a diet of pizza and other bad things - cold turkey - to vegan for the few days that Jillian lived with me. I always felt better physically after she left and ever so gradually... it always takes me a good long time to make big life changes... the pendulum would swing back to the pizza and other bad things a little less each time.

I can honestly say that this time, there was no major change in my diet once she got here. I was already there. I really want to be around for many more years. I have too much to do. I have too many projects in progress or in my future. Too many people to meet. Too many places to visit. Too much life to live. I'm really just getting started.

There have been a lot of people over the years who have been poking at me to take care of myself. I appreciate them all. I listened and even though I may not have been ready to get serious about when I was hearing it, I never forgot. But hanging out with Jillian over the past few years has taught me that healthy food is not bland and tasteless. We always look forward to our dinners at the Chicago Diner and now at one of our new discoveries, Karyn's, which is a gourmet raw food restaurant. Delicious!

I've also become very familiar with the organic section of my neighborhood Dominicks. It's funny that now when I go into that huge store, I only shop in one little corner of it. I love my corn on the cob there, fresh green beans, broccoli, spinach... oranges, bananas, grapes, apples, pears, peaches... mmmmmm.

So after spending two selfish days of having Jillian all to myself, it was time to share her with the rest of the photographic community here in Chicago, I turned into June Cleaver and had dinner waiting for her when she came home after running all over doing several shoots a day. I did hear, "Honey, I'm home!" as she walked through the door last night. We are having a great time this week.

I'm peppering this entry with some of the images we've made here this week. It's always amazing how we keep topping ourselves every time we shoot. It’s one of the reasons I love Jillian. We push each other. And because we've worked together for so many years, we trust each other and I think it shows in our work together.

I try to come up with something new for every shoot with her. This time I really wanted to explore the natural light that is so abundant in this new space. It's interesting to learn about how the sun moves in a new space. I used to set up a little webcam at my old place a day or so before every shoot, so I could track where the sun would be during the day. It would take a picture every minute and stamp the time of day on it, so I could see that at 3:00pm, the sun would be on that wall for example.

In my new space I haven't really gotten that scientific. Must be that new relaxed and casual French attitude I've adopted. But I am pretty aware of the differences in the direction of the light from May when I moved in, to now in September. It's a little more to the south when it sets. So that means the light is in a different place now than where it was when I first moved in, or even when I shot Jillian here back in July.

So I got a little creative this time. If I wanted the sun to be in a certain place in my space, I just directed it there - with mirrors. A few years ago, my friend Jill gave me a set of mirrors that I think she got at IKEA, wondering if I could put them to good use somehow. I think I even used them back then to create double images of bodies. But even back then I think I realized they would be good at bending natural sunlight to go where I wanted it to go.

This time with Jillian I decided to refine my skills a little bit. She was a little unclear as to what I was doing as I was lining up all these mirrors in different parts of my main shooting space. Three here pointing in one direction. Two over there pointing light towards the same wall, but from a completely different angle. But like the true muse that she is, she didn't ask any questions and just let me work and figure it all out. She's great that way. When we finally got a chance to look at what we did, she got it. It was fun.


Here's a reverse photo of the mirror setup I used to photograph Jillian in one of my doorways that otherwise would never get any sunlight. The photographs I made with this light are of her in the beautiful pink Betsy Johnson dress. You may have seen it before in some of the Vegas photos. It's pretty remarkable how direct sunlight can look if you control it a little bit. And once again, thanks and credit must go to Jillian who not only does all her own hair and makeup when we work together, but she probably risked burning her retinas out staring into five mirrors directing the powerful light of the sun at her.


I love you Jillian! Thanks for being such a wonderful friend, muse and collaborator. And the rest of you out there reading this... wait 'til you hear the music she's making now! It will be out soon. It's amazing. It's Jillian. And she's doing it her way on her terms. So impressive.

Paris Lingering

I feel like there is so much more to write about Paris before I move on, yet so much is happening in the present that I'm torn between trying to write more about Paris before I forget all the details or writing about the amazing weekend I'm having creating new art with Jillian Ann. You can have a sneak peek of what we've been up to if you click on her link there.

So back to Paris and a few more highlights...

Moulin Rouge. Even before the movie starring Nicole and Ewan, I had a sense that Moulin Rouge was this amazing place where moral boundaries were pushed and Absinthe flowed freely. Then the movie came out and fine tuned everyone's idea of what Moulin Rouge was. Romantic, sexy. Well, there's yet another version of Moulin Rouge- the reality of it.

As we reached the top of the hill that the north end of Paris sits on, the first thing we spotted was the familiar windmill. The large red lettering that spelled out Moulin Rouge... then the cheap food stand next to it... and the unremarkable square it sort of anchored. It was smaller and much less grand than I was expecting. But like most things that you build up in your head or see in movies, the reality sometimes doesn't measure up.

In a beautiful city such as Paris, it was remarkably mundane somehow. Almost out of place. It was lacking a certain historical presence that I was expecting to feel. It was... well... touristy.

Not to say that we didn't have a great time there because we did. But I think we had to do a little quick mental adjustment to compensate as we were whisked in to the red, atmospheric, if a little worn, theater. I don't know if it was our improving French or the positive vibe we tried to present everywhere we went, we were seated in the front row... nearly on stage. I mean we could have put our drinks on the stage if our small table became too cramped with our entrees.

The way Moulin Rouge works is that you can attend one of two performances they have each evening. The first one seats for dinner at 7pm with the show at 9pm, and the second is just a performance only sometime around 11 or 11:30. We opted for dinner and it turned out to be the only dinner we planned in advance of arriving in Paris. There were three dinner menu choices. We opted for the Talouse Lautrec.

During the dinner the 1970's era black sparkley Merv Griffen-esque curtain parted to reveal the dinner band who performed a set of oddly American easy listening hits, like Feelings and Blue Bayou. It was at this point that I motioned to the waiter to bring us another bottle of wine. Nothing like a little wine buzz to turn a wedding-band-like performance into something amusing. And Morgan and I laughed and talked and I'm pretty sure we were having more fun there than anyone there. Not sure what people were expecting, but there were a lot of stone faces in there during dinner.

Finally, though, the show started and it was actually quite good... in a cheesy kind of way. The music was all pre-recorded and Morgan and I spent a lot of time playing "What movie soundtrack is that from," during the evening.

About the only thing that was as expected during the whole evening was that there were a lot of topless women on stage. And happily all of the small and real variety. I think I speak for Morgan as well when I say we would have been disappointed to watch a burlesque review with a lot of fake plastic boobs. They were actually all very good dancers. In fact during the big highly costumed and choreographed entrance, since we were so close to the stage as I mentioned before, one of the billowing capes of one of the dancers managed to drag across our table and knock our little table lamp over and onto the stage. Morgan was on lamp duty for the rest of the evening.

The men were... how should I put this... well... flaming. They were all impeccably good looking, but their costumes were something like a cross between a gay male ice capades review and backup dancers in a 1983 Pat Benatar music video. Very entertaining though. In fact, at one point as the curtain opened to reveal a lone male sailor singing his heart out alone on a very cheesy boat set, Morgan lost it and spent the next ten minutes trying to keep her laughter under control. Of course watching her shaking uncontrollably set me off and I thought we were doing a pretty good job of keeping it under control until I realized that the afore mentioned table lamp was wobbling back and forth so violently from the vibration of our laughter that we weren't fooling anyone.

An interesting thing about a topless show is that after a while you get a little numb to the naked breasts, even as nice as they were. And I guess I kinda felt bad about that for a while. I mean, here are these women dancing their topless hearts out and we're not even appreciating that they're doing it half naked. I think the Moulin Rouge was aware of this and every so often another kind of act would come on stage as a little boobie sorbet. One was two men who very adeptly balanced all over each other. Impressive. Another was a man with a light projector and a movie screen who did a very nice job of shadow puppetry. No really, it was entertaining in an odd European kind of way. I enjoyed it. Another time a sort of clown came out with a big oversized clown movie camera with a big crank and recruited a handful of tourists to act out his little play. Actually very entertaining as well. Really, and I usually hate clowns.

But then in short order the boobies were back on stage and all was right with the world. They confiscated all of our cameras before we went in, or I'm sure Morgan would have managed to capture some of the fun on the sly. She's just that good. But we were thwarted... this time at least.


After the show we walked along boulevard de Clichy, one of the seedier streets in Paris. Sex shows everywhere. We took pictures of course and then found a bar with a seemingly filthy name, although it was just an English bar called the Cockney Pub. Even though they had Cosmopolitan listed on their drink menu, the waiter seemed a little confused when we asked for two. He brought us a distant cousin to the Cosmo, so we decided it would probably be best to stick with beer after that. We had another great conversation. Laughed some more about the sailor in Moulin Rouge and headed back to Champs-Elysees to walk and people watch. Since it was late we took a cab there and had a great conversation with Rohmey our taxi driver. We spoke French to start and then he spoke English back to us and we had a great laugh and he told us how much he liked The Blues Brothers and "black music." We encouraged him to turn up the Barry White he was clearly dying to show off and we drove through the streets of Paris with I Only Want To Be With You absolutely blaring out the windows at 1am.

As the week passed we made no fewer than three attempts to see the Chagall ceiling in the Paris Opera. Each time we were told not today due to a rehearsal, but they kept letting us use our admission ticket from the first day to wander around in the still amazing lobby and outer hallways. So we would do the only thing you can do in Paris when you can't get your way. We stopped at a café and had espressos and people watched. C'est la vie.

Notre Dame was beautiful, although I have to admit I felt strangely uncomfortable on the inside. I think in some ways I'm still coming to terms with my Catholic upbringing and sometimes I don't like what the church represents. It doesn't happen in every church or cathedral I go into, but it did happen at Notre Dame. Maybe there are bad ghosts there. I'm not sure. Maybe I just always felt sorry for Quasimoto. There have been plenty of unobtainable Esmereldas in my life. Who knows. We walked outside and started to take a few photographs of the front of the cathedral. Framing, backing up a few steps to try to get the massive towers in the frame, backing up a few more steps, trying again, backing up some more. Finally we found ourselves on the back of the square and only then, even with fairly wide angle lenses could we fit everything we wanted into the frame.


We sat there for a while and talked about the uncomfortableness on the inside of the cathedral and what it meant. We people watched some more. Always fascinating. We walked around to the back and found a beautiful garden. We took more pictures there and it felt a little more comfortable there. Morgan learned over one garden rail as far as she could trying to get a macro close-up photo of a bee on a flower. We figured out that if I held her hand and leaned back a little, she could lean in an extra foot or so and get right on top of the bee. I guess we managed to mimic the flying buttresses that we seemed to be standing in the shadows of.

Since I'm writing about the week in no particular order... how French of me... I find myself thinking of our last morning in Paris. One last thing we both seemed drawn to was the Luxembourg Gardens which were ironically closer to our hotel than most of the other things we had spent the week walking around Paris to see. I had picked up a baguette, some grapes and some cheese while Morgan was getting ready and we headed off. We didn't have much time before we needed to get back to the hotel to pick up our bags and head off to Charles de Gaul Airport, but we made the most of it. We talked, we sat silently, we enjoyed our little breakfast.

We picked up a few French magazines. Paris Vogue, Paris Elle, Numero, and Paris Photo. Grabbed a taxi and headed back to the hotel that really was beginning to feel like home after a week of living there, amazing late night/early morning conversations fueled by French wine and a lovely view out of our top floor windows.

As I was settling with the hotel manager, he thanked me and told me he really enjoyed us being there and that we were very polite. Now that really meant something to me. It made me feel good. We did try to do as the French do while we were visiting Paris. We really did try to speak French and respect their city and the customs as we discovered them. We tried to blend as much as we could. So to hear the manager of our hotel say we were polite, that was just about the highest compliment I could have imagined.

We did it. We lived in Paris. And we did it well.

As we jumped into the taxi to go to the airport, the gentle sprinkle of rain that started at the hotel got heavier. Morgan and I just looked out of our respective windows as the rainy streets of Paris passed in front of our eyes. We didn't feel sad about leaving because we knew we would be back. We had experienced a week that changed both of our lives. We were coming back to Chicago with a new outlook on the future. A future in which anything was possible.

"You know what this is?" I asked Morgan, pointing to the sky. She shook her head no. "Paris is crying because we're leaving," I said. Morgan smiled, "We'll be back."

Indeed we will.

Reflections on Paris

Funny, we've been back from Paris not quite a week yet, and I can't seem to get this smile off my face. Nor can I shake this feeling of relaxed contentment. I have to admit that the week or so we spent in Paris was one of the most incredible weeks I've ever had in a number of ways. I've always found that traveling was a great way to clear my head. To shake the cobwebs from the everyday things that seemed important or critical or necessary and really sort out what is important to me.

I haven't truly been out of North America in six years and that, I've learned, was about five years too long. The last time I was in Europe in 1999, Bill Clinton was president. We were all wondering if planes were going to fall out of the sky at midnight on January 1st, 2000. We were off by a little less than two years. It was a time that even though one of our Air Force planes had clipped a gondola full of Italian skiers and caused them to fall to their deaths and our government had just recently cleared the pilots from any negilgence, much to the Italians ire, Americans were pretty much considered okay by the rest of the world.

Times have changed. I'll admit I did consider buying the Canadian camouflage kit that consists of lots of red Maple leaf patches, T-shirts and hats to help ashamed Americans travel incognito abroad. I think one of the reasons that a trip to France was so appealing at the moment was simply because the French have endured a completely undeserved ridiculing by Americans who should know better. Just because they didn't want to play in our Iraqi reindeer games. Freedom fries. Surrender Monkeys. How embarrassing.

We were very quick to remind the French that we helped show their German occupiers the door back in '45. We reminded them about that a lot. But what we failed to remind ourselves in our frat-boy-like state of teasing is that way back during the Revolutionary War, it was the French who gave us the cash and hardware that it took to fight off the British Redcoats and start this country that we've been so blindly patriotic about during the current administration.

Okay, enough of a rant. I'm really in much too good a place right now to get myself worked up over politics at the moment.

Traveling to France always comes with the caveat from well meaning but ill informed people of, "You know they hate Americans there, or at least anything that isn't French." Before this most recent trip, the only time I had set foot in Paris was back in '94 or '95 when I spent an all too brief day there on my way back from Greece. I showed up dressed like an American speaking only English in the middle of the night. I managed to take a bus from Charles de Gaul to the Paris Opera where I sat on the historic steps for a few minutes without a map trying to figure out what I should do. I didn't get much help from the people passing by, but it was my own fault. If you were walking down Michigan Avenue and you saw an under dressed person sitting on the steps of the Art Institute speaking to you in Dutch at 1am would you stop to figure out how to help them? Not many of us would I think.

Eleven years later I returned with Morgan, dressed properly, and with enough French vocabulary to interact with the Parisians in a polite manner. The difference was day and night. You get back what you put out there and Paris proved that theory of mine again and again. Paris is perhaps the most beautiful city in the world. The people who live there are rightly proud of it. If visitors from the US have a bad time there, they have only themselves to blame.

Morgan and I spent days walking the 17th century cobblestone streets, winding alleys, glorious gardens and parks. We took our time and stopped often to enjoy a park bench for a half an hour or watch the people pass at one of the dozens of cafés that we frequented. AS the week went on, our French got good enough to completely abandon English when we were speaking with the locals. That was quite a victory for both of us. One of my favorite moments was when Morgan and I were walking past one of the small shops where I would buy fruit and cheese and having the owner yell a big "Bonjour!" across the street when he recognized me. It felt like home somehow.

Did we go to the Louvre? Yes... but we didn't go inside. Did we see the Pompidou? Yes... but we only went as far in as the W.C. (the Water Closet for you non-European types). The fountain art was amazing enough for us in the square outside as we relaxed in the sun and people-watched. I think we really never wanted to be far from the life on the street. We'll go into the Louvre next time, we would say. Put the boat ride down the River Seine on the list for next time as well.

It's not that we didn't explore any Parisian interiors. We climbed the 300 narrow, winding, winding, winding, dark stairs to the top of the dome of Sacre-Coeur. The reward of an unreal sky full of clouds that looked like they were painted over the beautiful city below and rays of sunlight surrounding the Eiffel Tower was more than we could have imagined, and certainly more than I can describe in words here. Hopefully the pictures will do it justice.

As we were enjoying the near solitude and quiet of the dome at Sacre-Coeur, we could hear English heading toward us, getting louder and louder. It could only be Americans we both thought. Sure enough. Nice people, but as they counted off their long checklist of Parisian sites they had seen that day or were going to see, we realized that we really had managed to successfully stop and smell the roses. In less than a minute, they were gone and we had the beauty of a quiet summer day in Paris below us to consider once again. And we sat in silence on one of the stone benches and thought how lucky we were to be there.

One night we decided to do the single most touristy thing in Paris and that was to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. After walking around a city with beautiful stone buildings and intricate marble architecture, the iron work of the tower was stunning in a completely different way. Bathed in the golden glow of light, it is impossible not to stop and look up at it whenever you see it poking through a space between two buildings or over the tree tops.

The night we chose was near the end of our visit and we agreed it was better that was because we could see everywhere we had been during the week. At the ticket booth at the base, you can decide if you want to do up to the top or stop about half way up at one of the middle levels. The sign said it was a 30 minute wait to go up to the top, but really, how many years had we been waiting to see Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower? 30 minutes seemed like nothing. However, that logic didn't seem to matter to another group of American girls who after waiting in line for 20 minutes to get to the ticket booth decided that 30 more minutes was just more than they could muster and they got out of line. Has everyone who speaks English forgotten how to stop and smell the roses?!

In no time, Morgan and I were at the top, looking down on the glittering city with our own eyes, the warm breeze reminding us that we were indeed on the top of this amazing icon of all that is Paris. We may have stayed up there for two hours walking from side to side, taking more pictures, talking and not talking, just soaking it all in. It was beautiful.

More on Paris... soon.

Living in Paris... at least for a week

I'm writing this on our last morning in Paris. We've settled into a nice little routine here. I usually get up first and get ready and then head out to write or to do a little shopping for our day while Morgan gets ready. There's a little coolness in the air this morning that hasn't been here yet this week. It feels a little bit like fall today after a week of blue skies and warm temperatures. The trees have begun changing colors here, a bit earlier than Chicago, which has made this beautiful city all the more lovely.

Before I talk about some of the specifics of the trip, I, or perhaps I should say we, really found a nice little groove here. I think we both came to the conclusion the other day that we haven't really vacationed in Paris, as much as we lived in Paris for a week. With the exception of purchasing tickets for Moulin Rouge before we got here, we decided not to plan anything in advance on this trip. We had lots of friends recommending things for us to do and we asked a few people before we came what they might recommend, but we chose to wake up every morning, and see what we felt like that morning before heading off in any certain direction.

It was a great way to spend time in Paris. We never felt hurried or rushed or on a schedule, and instead of using the Metro, which is a great, clean and efficient way to get around the city, most of the time we explored on foot. I've always believed in learning about cities on foot. You come across so many more things that way. And we certainly did. Our rule of thumb was simply, let's try to take a street or a bridge that we hadn't before. It was great. We began each day by setting out in a certain direction, maybe stopping at one of the cafés and having a couple of espressos and a little breakfast before we got too far on our journey.

In addition to being a great photographer, Morgan has an unreal sense of direction. Once in a while we'd stop and consult a map, but quite honestly we just managed to find whatever we were looking for just by winding our way through the beautiful city. If one of us spotted a little something down an alley or a narrow side street or one of the many parks and gardens, we'd make a detour and do a little exploring.

I should add here that when I'm traveling through a city I usually find it hard to travel with someone because photography is such a strange animal. There's lots of suddenly pausing when something catches my eye, waiting a minute to see if something is really there to make a photograph and then waiting for the people to get out of the way or the light to get right or whatever. Lots of starting and stopping. I'd be the first to admit that it would probably be a difficult way to vacation for most people. But after a nice test run last month in Vegas, Morgan and I have managed to find a rhythm and pace that I've never experienced traveling with anyone else. As we walked along every time I found myself about to turn to her and say, "Hey I'm going to stop and take a picture here," she inevitably was already in the process of pulling her camera out. It was very cool.


She shot digital and I shot both film and digital. We'll definitely break the one thousand photos barrier on this trip. I should mention that all the photographs in my last blog entry with the exception of the photo of us at Man Ray were taken by Morgan. I'll start putting copyright tags on them so she gets the credit she deserves!

I'll have to pick this up again tomorrow because I'm out of time at the moment. But enjoy the sampling of photos we both took. Just scratching the surface.

Breakfast in Chicago, Lunch in New York, Dinner in Paris

Monday 9 September 2005

Ah so much to say and not a good enough reason to spend time writing it all down here. I mean, we are in Paris. Seems like there isn't much time to sit in the hotel room, which is beautiful by the way, overlooking a grove of trees and one of the many gardens in in this beautiful city.

Morgan and I have been using the "let's walk in the direction" method to explore Paris and it has worked like a charm so far. We've accidentally stumbled onto an amazing array of sites, both the usual and the off the beaten path kind. Today for instance, after finding a Virgin Megastore to pick up a forgotten USB cable so we can load all of our photos to the computer, we headed back east on the right bank and found the Palais Royal Gardens. Just a stunning place. We took photographs. Watched the children play on the square and then put our feet up on the fountain in the center of it all. We've discovered how to live in Paris.

This morning while Morgan was getting ready I walked... west from the hotel... seemed like a good direction. Picked up a nice bottle of wine and a wine opener, some fruit, and some flowers and a vase for our room. We have two big beautiful windows that open overlooking the garden and the table now looks beautiful with some flowers on it.

Tonight we're having dinner at Man Ray. It should be wonderful.

More to tell, but I'm not going to waste another minute writing about it. We're going to go out and live it.

This is a photo Morgan took just over one of the beautiful bridges on the right bank looking back toward the Eiffel Tower. She's becoming quite the photographer. I find myself picking up my camera less and less on this trip because she's finding the photographs I would be taking. It's been nice to have a new photographer to travel with.

Wednesday 10 September 2005

We have really dialed in to the Paris pace and lifestyle here... perhaps a little too well. You know you're having a wonderful time when a great deal of the trip is discussing plans to come back here... forever.

This morning I'm writing in our little hotel courtyard, surrounded by beautiful flowers and white shuttered windows opened above me. There are birds speaking in bird French and I hear the occasional phone call from the hotel desk inside.

Man Ray on Monday night was one of the most incredible experiences I think I've ever had. I know Morgan would agree. It is a beautiful restaurant a little off the Champs-Elysees. We walked past the serious doorman who gave us a welcoming smile once we told him bonsoir , and we walked down a beautiful staircase. Our hotel had helped us make reservations so in short order our hostess led us down another beautiful staircase to the restaurant floor. I should mention that all this time, there is a 15 piece orchestra playing on a small stage. Beautiful live music- in a beautiful restaurant and we hadn't even made it to our table yet.

I could write for a long time about Man Ray and perhaps I will another time. But I'll mention the highlights. Soon the orchestra was joined by a man and a woman who began to sing selections from The Barber of Seville and the Marriage of Figaro among others. So beautiful. Everyone was so talented and enthusiastic about their performances. Morgan and I both sat there and soaked it all in. Beautiful opera performances at an amazing restaurant in the middle of Paris. What more can I say. Our waitress kept apologizing to us about the service because I guess one of the Saudi princes was also there that night and they were stretched a little thin. But we didn't care. The food was delicious, the atmosphere was incredible and Morgan and I had another of our great conversation there as we always do and we pretty much closed the place. We've been doing that a lot in Paris. Mya, our waitress, gave us a few of her favorite places to try that are off the tourist guides and we walked out into the night.

We headed toward what we could no longer avoid after such a wonderful evening. The Eiffel Tower. I've mentioned before that part of the fun of being in Paris for the first time was walking down the street and all of a sudden glimpsing the top of the tower over a building or a garden or park. It's really breathtaking to see something so familiar that you've never actually seen before with your own eyes. Ten years ago when I was here I just kept walking toward it until I was just across the Seine from it. Tonight as we walked toward it, Morgan was getting more and more excited with every glimpse. And of course our cameras would come out and we would spend 20 minutes or so bracing ourselves against whatever we could find so we could take long exposure photographs of it. I think Morgan took about 70 pictures and I probably did half as many. The Eiffel Tower was fairly well documented that night. Later we even found one of the corners that I took one of my favorite photos from back in '94. And we found the carousel that ended up in so many of my pictures from that trip. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We got closer and closer. But this time Morgan's feet had given out from her fabulous heels and she went barefoot, running across Avenue de New York as we finally reached the Seine. More pictures, more running closer until we finally were underneath it. The light show was changing all the time until finally... we closed the Eiffel Tower as well. But it was still beautiful in the darkness. We took a few more photographs until it started to feel a little bit like we should get going before someone decided to pick off the American tourists. Big city... you never know.

We woke up the next morning and headed over to the Paris Opera which we had been to yesterday but couldn't get into the auditorium to see the Chagall ceiling because of a rehearsal. Still the same on this day, so we'll keep trying until we get to see it. We're really taking Paris in on foot. We've been on the Metro once. Beautifully clean, efficient and easy, but we can't seem to stop exploring on foot, always looking to cross a the Seine on a bridge we haven't been on before, always looking for a street we haven't walked down.

We've made a lot of great discoveries that way. We found a parasol shop called Antione's that has been in existence since 1754. I had to buy one that I fell in love with. Purple with black lace trim. I'm sure it will show up in a future photoshoot. We bought Morgan some new YSL sunglasses so she looks even more fabulous walking the streets Paris now. I'll admit I've had to step it up here myself fashion-wise. Morgan is just too beautiful to be seen with an American in shorts. Nothing but pants, not jeans and button down shirts, sweaters and a jacket for me. i think we both did a little clothes shopping before we left last week.

Cafes and leisurely time drinking espressos, more exploring, finding a nice quite bench in a beautiful garden. So relaxing.

More later....