The Louvre Just Released It's Entire Collection Online

 

The Louvre has been closed because of the pandemic. However  the entire collection of over 480,000 pieces from the Musée du Louvre and the Musée National Eugène-Delacroix can be viewed online - for free.

You can browse the collection by paintings, sculptures, furniture, textiles, jewelry and finery, writing and inscriptions or objects. You also can search by themes such as Masterpieces of the Louvre, Acquisitions Made in 2020, The Art of Portraiture and more.

Or if you prefer to just wander through museums and galleries (like I always do) there is an interactive map. 

Click here to access the online collection.

So until we can get back to Paris in person - enjoy. There is a lovely French Bakery down the street from me so I am going to pick up a chocolate croissant before I return to explore more. A nice French wine would work too.

Cynthia

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

One of the first places I want to go once we can travel again is Scotland. A must see for me in Edinburg is the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. There are two galleries - Modern One and Modern Two. Both are closed right now, but will be reopening soon. Modern One opens on May 16th and Modern Two opens on April 26th.

In the mean time you can take a virtual tour, including the gallery's collection of Dada and Surrealism...

and the Cubism collection.

Click here to learn more about the Scottish National Gallery Modern Art.

Cynthia

A Virtual Garden Tour

 

A walk in a garden always helps to lift my spirits. Not so easy to travel to some of the world's best public gardens these days. More and more gardens are offering virtual tours. Here is one from Claude Monet's garden at Giverny.

Chocolate

A Few Chocolate Facts - Did you know that 83 billion dollars worth of chocolate are sold annually, worldwide? Chocolate lovers consume over 7.2 million metric tons each year. 

Cocoa pods flourish near the equator with 70% of cocoa coming from West Africa. 90% of those crops come from small farmers. Eat chocolate. You are supporting small African cocoa farmers.

And very importantly these days, chocolate is a mood booster as cocoa raises serotonin levels in the brain.

Whenever I travel I make it a point to visit a local chocolate shop or festival. Click here to see ten of the best Chocolate Festivals around the world, including one online festival.

Ten of the World's Best Farmers' Markets

Whenever I travel I always make a point of asking if there is a farmers' market nearby. Photographing food markets is one of my favorite pastimes. I like to get up early to watch the vendors carefully  display their produce and to see the market come alive. 

Not only do I get mouth watering photographs, but I have fruit, vegetables, cheese, freshly baked bread and flowers to take back to my hotel room.

I have been to farmers' markets all over the world, including Cuba, France and Brazil. There is something unifying about them. They are all different and yet all the same... women walking along with their market baskets, neighbors greeting neighbors, flowers alongside produce, happy friendly faces.

Note because of COVID-19 hours and openings are currently changed.

Click here to find out about the ten must see markets on my list...

Cynthia

Ten of The Most Beautiful Gardens In the World

So are you wanting to buy a ticket to someplace wonderful once you can leave your house and get on an airplane? Well here is my list of ten of the world's most gorgeous public gardens. I could have listed many many more (and actually did mention an 11th because I could not leave it out.) But this will get us started on our wish list. 

Cynthia

Click to see the list... with links to the gardens websites. Many are closed now but have virtual tours.

Go Outside and Play! by Bill Sheehan

Well apparently it’s true. As I’ve been told repeatedly throughout most of my life by many people beginning with my father, but have steadfastly refused to believe, I am not in fact the center of the universe. I was informed of this fact once again.

A serendipitous encounter in the high desert just outside Cle Elum, WA during a brief period of clearing on an otherwise rain soaked weekend in early August; the Perseid Meteor Showers is one of the most astonishing spectacles I’ve ever witnessed. Shooting stars streaking across the sky and disappearing so fast you’re not really sure that you saw them, and other stars falling in long, graceful arcs as if something imagined or remembered from a childhood dream. So many stars falling from the heavens that after an hour you’d think the skies should be empty, completely void. And as the clouds rolled in again, and the rains again began to fall, the sky did appear dark and the earth appeared to sparkle and glisten as if covered with… well, stars.

There are a few simple and unexpected encounters in life that stand out from the rest and seem to illuminate what an extraordinary and wondrous world we live in; night-blooming jasmine, fire flies, banyan trees... this is one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars came out only once every thousand years.

“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how 

would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations 

the remembrance of the city of God which has been shown! But 

every night come out these envoys of beauty and light the universe 

with their admonishing smile...” 

And we watch television. Should we instead be building cathedrals, writing poetry, symphonies, hymns and prayers to the greater glory of God? Perhaps. We do seem to have lost our collective sense of wonderment, or perhaps the world just moves too fast now. Or perhaps we don’t even bother to look anymore, after all it is kind of an awful distraction from Tweeting and Twittering.

I remember Mom’s admonition clearly: “Get out of the house! Go outside and play!” I guess she was right after all.

More from Bill Sheehan

Color and Travel

Do you love color? Do you love to travel?

I bought the book The Rainbow Atlas: a Guide to the World's 500 Most Colorful Places, in the hopeful belief that someday we will be able to leave our homes and once again travel. 

Since moving to Mexico I have a whole new relationship with color. I love having it all around me. The Rainbow Atlas feeds that craving. It does not disappoint. Seven bloggers contribute stories of their most colorful travel experiences.

"The entries in this book are arranged by longitude, starting in Alaska and traveling around the globe to New Zealand." Each entry includes a colorful photograph and recommends the best time of the year to visit for the best weather and the most color. The bloggers cover what's most colorful in the world in nature, urban art, festivals, built environments, leisure and culture and places of worship.

The entries are brief, (there are 500 after all) but contain just enough information to pique your interest and inspire you to once again want to get on an airplane.

So what's on my wishlist from this book? There's a lot, but here are my top ten.

#8 BLOOM, The Abbotsford Tulip Festival in Abbotsford Canada, where you can meander through 2.5 million tulips.

#10 Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle Washington, U.S. This has been on my travel list for awhile now. This is the 1 ½ acre  indoor/outdoor exhibition of glass-artist Dale Chihuly.

#35 Guanajuato, Mexico where colorful homes cover the hills.

#36 Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque New Mexico, U.S. This is the largest hot air balloon festival in the world.

#40 Trajineras, Xochimilco, Mexico CIty, Mexico. Xochimilco is a borough south of Mexico City with an extensive canal system. The trajineras are colorful flat bottom boats that travel the canals.

#61 Isla Mujeres, Quintana Roo Mexico. This is a 4.3 mile, quiet island filled with colorful homes and shops.

#62 Northern Lights, Nunavut Canada. Seeing the northern lights has been on my wish list for a long time.

#172 Kelburn Castle, Glasgow Scotland. An old castle nestled in the Scottish woods painted by four Brazilian graffiti artists.

#173 Hidden Lane, Glasgow Scotland. A "charming little lane painted in every color of the rainbow" and home to artists, designers and musicians' studios.

#178 Victoria Street, Edinburgh, Scotland - the inspiration for the Harry Potter novels.

The Rainbow Atlas is a wonderful gift for yourself, for your mom for Mothers Day, for a recent graduate or just for a friend that is sheltering at home and is missing being out and about in the world.

Available on iBooks $14.99

Available in hardcover on Amazon $30

Available for Amazon Kindle $9.99