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My Favorite Bookstore on Earth
Let alone one of my favorite places on earth. I could spend hours and hours just getting lost here and finding myself at the end of the day with a tower of books that’s half my height, all ready for shipping back home to the islands.
New York, 2007
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One of my favorite pictures that I took of Venice when we were there a year ago.
Venice, April 2011
Love Padlocks in Florence
Walking along the Arno river in Florence last summer, I noticed that the fence that separated the side walk from the street was laced with padlocks. Apparently, lovers have resorted to leaving their locks there because the city council no longer allows people to place their love padlocks on Ponte Vecchio (the bridge over Arno River where they once removed 5500 padlocks of love from) due to the fact that these might scratch and dent the bridge’s metal.
My mom pointed out while we were there that placing the love padlocks along the walkway by the river wasn’t the same as placing them on Ponte Vecchio itself. But every bit of Florence sings of romance. To lock away and leave a piece of your love anywhere in that city would undoubtably be more than enough.
Florence Italy, April 2011
I’ve never really liked the lyrics from the song, but Wiz Khalifa sure knew what he was talking about. Oh to be young, wild, and free.
Boracay, April 2012
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Portrait of Madame Recamier
Jacques Louis David, Oil on Canvas, 1800
Jacque Louis David’s Portrait of Madame Recamier isn’t a part of the Louvre’s list of main art attractions, but it probably is my favorite work of art there.
It caught my eye while sitting across the wall it shared with a bunch of other paintings, and in an instant, I was hooked. When I got back to our hotel that evening I googled the artist, then Madame Recamier, and found out that she was a beautiful and accomplished Parisian socialite who had a lot of friends from the political and literature circles in the early 19th Century. She would invite them to tea in the salon of her house which was a pretty happening place back in their day, making you a someone in society if you were invited to one of her soirees. On a more scandalous note, the man she married was a rich banker 30 years her senior (she was 15 when they wed) and there were rumors that he was actually her biological father, the two of them marrying to make her his heir.
I don’t quite know what draws me to paintings that I like, but I think for this one it was how fascinating Madame Recamier seemed to be. Djuna Barnes wrote about this painting in her book Creatures in an Alphabet:
The Seal, she lounges like a bride,
Much too docile, there’s no doubt;
Madame Récamier, on side,
(if such she has), and bottom out.
Louvre, Paris, 2011
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“Most importantly, the meaning of spirituality lays the seeds for our destiny and the path we must follow”- Dennis Banks
Monks making their way back to their home in(side) Angkor Wat
Siem Reap, Cambodia 2011
