A sunny cold Sunday afternoon in Paris in late autumn, 5th arrondissement, Place de la Contrescarpe. People are sitting on the “Terrasse du Restaurant Delmas”. Listening to the piano player, chatting with friends, looking at the passersby. Is there a better thing to do on such a fine day?
Le Pianiste Place de la Contrescarpe - Paris V. Watercolor Painting, 9,5 x 12 in - 24 x 30 cm
©estandrea 2010 purchase information: you can buy this original waterpainting, please contact me cestandrea at gmail dot com if you are interested!
Today, January 7th, 2010, snow has fallen during the night, all the cars in my street are white, a very unusual sight. It’s minus 6° C, which is very cold for Parisian standard. People have packed their Christmas-window decoration away (we did too), and you can see discarded Christmas trees in the streets, waiting to be picked up by the garbage removal. A friend of mine always says: “January is the longest month”, she means that it seems to stretch out forever.
Yesterday was the 6th, which means that many families celebrate Epiphany, buying a “galette des rois”, a fine filo pastry cake, with a filling of marzipan. This cake traditionally comes with a golden papercrown and hides a “Fève” which means “bean” but is not a bean. Probably it has been in former times, but now it is a little ceramic figure, representing the miniature holy Mary, or a bottle of wine 
or a little animal or whatever. So,the person who picks the part of cake with the “Fève” in it, will be the king. King of the day.
Yesterday was also the start of the winter sales here in Paris. So, again, the metro is crowded with people on a shopping trip, hunting for their favourite designer clothes at a reasonable price. In my favourite little boutique “Cinabre” on Boulevard Voltairebought a calf-long plum colored wool skirt, and a fine black wool top, made by a Japanese designer, plus two bonnets (hats), one rasperry colored and flowerpotshaped:) , the other grey and more like a “casquette”, oh and a pair of earrings, all at a very reasonable price. I’m wearing this now, and will soon brave the cold outside. Waiting for spring already….. Have a wonderful week!
PS: just an information which might interest you, if you also promote your art via Zazzle: I stop working with Zazzle as one of my readers ordered postcards with my prints, and was very disappointed about the bad quality of the paper. I then decided only to sell my original art or original prints on demand, do the printing myself on first quality art paper and deliver a certificate of origin with it.
