Lunch with that View of Mont Blanc ...

 

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high: the power is there, The still and solemn power of many sights And many sounds, and much of life and death. In the long glare of day, the snows descend Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there, Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, Or the sunbeams dart through them.

Percy Bysshe Shelly, Poet.

The excitement over breakfast these mornings is no longer about an espresso, toast and peach jam ... no.  These mornings it's all about my effervescent iron drink.  6 days into the 4 months before retesting and I can do the stairs a little more simply and the heart palpitations are almost gone.

I've stopped coffee for the moment and may not begin again until Genova, at the end of November.  Let's see it.

In the meantime, I've been torturing myself ... selecting, deselecting, and reselecting images for the exhibition that opens in 2 weeks.  Nothing is more guaranteed to leave my finding my photography lacking than imagining I can entertain a vast range of people with my images.

The only good news is that, while searching, I've found photographs of time spent in remarkable places ... like this table that offered a rather superb view of Mont Blanc.  At 4,810 m (15,781 ft) it is the highest mountain in the Alps.

Napolean and Excess ... perhaps.

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

Napoleon Bonaparte.

I was wandering through the Château de Fontainebleau and found this room.  I've never taken much interest in the things Napolean did however his great big old palace suggests he was an excessive kind of guy.

However I'm reading Eduardo Galeano's book, Mirrors, and this means I am never going to form a good opinion of Napolean.  Not via these pages. 

Galeano's journey though ... highly recommended.

Château de Fontainebleau, France

Imagination rules the world.
Napoleon Bonaparte.

It was a huge day in France today ... and while in the area, of course, we wandered off to explore Napolean's place in Fontainebleau.

Favourite moment was escaping the 3 tour groups (with guides) who dogged our footsteps and finding ourselves alone when we reached this magical corridor.

I am quite the brat when it comes to preferring to visit popular places alone.  We achieved that illusion today. 

See.