In search of Vincent Van Gogh
This weekend we made a day trip to Auvers Sur Oise. It's a small village outside Paris where Vincent Van Gogh spent his final few months.
We enjoyed jambon et fromage crepes with a bit of Cidre for lunch. Yum, I will miss the crepes in France.
Then we visited Vincent's room above a restaurant. He died in that room after a self inflicted gunshot. While it was slightly moving, I did find it overpriced. The town has set up plaques where van Gogh painted different scenes, so we toured some of those. We also visited his grave, and took a nice walk in the wheat fields.
We also visited the Absinthe Museum. Bizarre. Absinthe was a drink in the late 1800's to early 1900's that had hallucinogenic properties. Artists and writers in Paris got hooked on it, and felt it helped their art (sure, buddy). It's nickname was the 'Green Faerie'. The museum was filled with lots of absinthe stuff.... posters, ads, art, glasses, bottles.... A common theme in the posters was a person with a glazed look in their eye looking longingly at a glass filled with green liquid. I told Sarah that this is what a museum devoted to legalized crack cocaine would look like.
For such a cute little town, it was a photographers nightmare. My efforts to capture *any* good pictures were constantly thwarted by evil thick black electrical lines. Whoever works for the French electric company in that region worked really hard to make sure most of the promising shots of Auvers Sur Oise had a thick black line draped across them.
We enjoyed jambon et fromage crepes with a bit of Cidre for lunch. Yum, I will miss the crepes in France.
Then we visited Vincent's room above a restaurant. He died in that room after a self inflicted gunshot. While it was slightly moving, I did find it overpriced. The town has set up plaques where van Gogh painted different scenes, so we toured some of those. We also visited his grave, and took a nice walk in the wheat fields.
We also visited the Absinthe Museum. Bizarre. Absinthe was a drink in the late 1800's to early 1900's that had hallucinogenic properties. Artists and writers in Paris got hooked on it, and felt it helped their art (sure, buddy). It's nickname was the 'Green Faerie'. The museum was filled with lots of absinthe stuff.... posters, ads, art, glasses, bottles.... A common theme in the posters was a person with a glazed look in their eye looking longingly at a glass filled with green liquid. I told Sarah that this is what a museum devoted to legalized crack cocaine would look like.
For such a cute little town, it was a photographers nightmare. My efforts to capture *any* good pictures were constantly thwarted by evil thick black electrical lines. Whoever works for the French electric company in that region worked really hard to make sure most of the promising shots of Auvers Sur Oise had a thick black line draped across them.
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