Notre Dame

Notre Dame by Alessio Fangano on 500px

Gothic art is simply amazing, it never cease to inspire me!

In St. Louis en l'Ile

In St. Louis en l'Ile by Alessio Fangano on 500px

In the little charming Ile St. Louis in the center of Paris lies a hidden gem of Parisian churches: St Louis en l'Ile. This is an example of what you may find inside (more to come).

In the backyard

In the backyard by Alessio Fangano on 500px

One of the pleasure of Couchsurfing when traveling is that you get to experience the eveyday spaces of local people. This was a lovely installation I stumbled upon in the courtyard of one of my Parisian hosts in 2013.

Even in adversity

Even in adversity by Alessio Fangano on 500px

The surprises you find on a winter walk are hard to predict, even in a urban town like Paris.

Naked walk

Naked walk by Alessio Fangano on 500px

Even if with almost frozen hands, getting around Paris during that snowfall was a great decision.

A Parisian stroll

A Parisian stroll by Alessio Fangano on 500px

The square facing Notre Dame cathedral is always a very buzzy place on the Parisian nightlife. Let's take a stroll...

Kings and Queen

Kings and Queen by Alessio Fangano on 500px

During the French revolution, the original Gothic statues of the kings of Judah were beheaded because believed to be representation of French kings. You can find the original heads in the Cluny museum in Paris while this is a lovely and faithful XIXth century reconstruction.

A little bedtime story

Sometimes we don´t realize what is happening to us, sometimes we feel as if everything is normality itself.
The little troubles we have on a daily basis, have become so embroidered in the tapestry of our life that we don´t even notice them as extraneous anymore.
It is hard to believe that we actually might not be what we have become.

Mom Francesca's eggplant and onion casserole

Traveling always improves our lives; a rich baggage of memories and images can change us more than we can actually realize.
Oral stories sung by bards and grandparents have left the place to printed works and the ominous prescriptions of altarpieces and religious friezes.
Printed and visual experiences continously pull and push us around like little creatures on our shoulders whispering in our ears words of alternate realities populated by far away but somehow familiar beings. Invisible silken threads connect us nowadays in ways almost unimmaginable to our immediate ancestors.
"Practice makes us perfect" they used to say, practice is all they had to learn by, to improve, to debunk myths and legends, when they weren't meant to accompany us in the sweet kingdom of Morpheus.

Duck breast with caramelized onions & Sicilian orange sauce

Does Photography really steal souls? Probably not steal but capture it. Capturing, stealing, what's the difference? Probably the fact that we can't capture the whole soul of a place but just bits and pieces of it. So when we go on a holiday, visit a new restaurant, bar or anything alike and take snapshots of it, do we really capture its soul or just what resonates with us, what we already know and are able to recognize. To me capturing through photography tends to be the harder and more isolating day after day I try doing it. Isolating in the sense that often I'd like to be invisible sitting on a bench or at a cafe so to be able to observe for as long as I need without causing concern (or being asked to pay the bill).
Probably this is what it's all about, snap and snippets of a place, of a history, of a soul.

The simple French pleasures: Autour du Pho Part II

Often simple pleasures are those that can reach deeper into our hearts. May it be the right piece of music at the right moment, that subtle breeze that caresses our cheeks in a sunny spring day, the smell of somebody's home-cooking while coming back home from work; these light feathers of emotions are able to make our day.
As a foodie I tend to gravitate toward food in one form or another, to support me, to beat the time of my day and relieve me from the sudden dips and trenches were my energy could have fallen.

Paris 09 - a weekend of passion: Day 1

It is time for me and Paris to meet up again. Does it ever get bored of me? I do not think so, each time the welcome is very warm (this time also temperature wise); chattering people, laughter, shopping bags, shops, bistros, metro rides with its aquarium experience of human variety, are always there to welcome anybody.

This time I visited the city with two good friends (a shopaholic and a witty one, the latter joined us on the second day); goes by itself that it was great fun!
The trip started on a dark Thursday morning; the first train was at 7am when the city is still under the blanket of the starry sky, starting to move from its nocturnal bed. We reached Cologne on time and hopped onto the Thalys on our respective carriages. The voyage prospected to be fairly good and relaxing: no many crying babies on sight. As usual, I popped out of my bag the book I wanted to pretend reading along the cruise (this time it was “Du Fait de Cuisine – Traite de Gastronomie Médiévale de Maitre Chiquart”) and got comfy in my seat while the guy sitting beside me was trying to connect to the WiFi network.

Trip to Paris (Jan09)

It's been already almost a month since I've returned from my last trip to Paris (I guess you are going to hear me talking quite often about this wonderful city, I simply adore it!!); this time the trip was for professional reasons.
A friend of mine and I went for the Molecular Gastronomy course held by Prof. Hervè This at the AgroParisTech but here I will concentrate on the fun side of the trip: the meals!!!.

1st day – Friday
After a nice long walk of roughly 4 hours, we were ready to taste some good Parisian food.
While walking through the Quartier Latin admiring the showcases of the antiques shops, we remembered having spotted a very nice Vietnamese restaurant in the same neighbourhood during our last trip (the Parisian White Night of 2008; a great night!). It took us a while to find it again but once there, we realized how impossible it was to miss it. It is the the “Pho 67” just behind the nice small church of St Julien le Pauvre overlooking Notre Dame.