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| We love our wall niches! |
Melanie and I thought it would be awesome to use these niches to collect memories of our time in Paris and our travels around Europe. We're hoping to use one for some sort of Parisian collection, and the other for miscellaneous souvenirs.
1. Eiffel Tower
Last weekend we took a basket with wine, bread, and an assortment of cheeses, to the roof of the Pretty Simple building so we could see, for the first time, the tower lit up and sparkling! While buying the cheese and wine at Monoprix I noticed some miniature Eiffel Tower models that sparkle just like the real thing!
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| Our first Paris souvenir, to commemorate our first view of the Eiffel Tower at night! |
I'll update this page when we find new memories. It would be great if this could turn into a little hobby for us... visiting antique stores, and strange little shops, to find new treasures for one or the other of our niches.
2. Antique Opera Glasses
We stopped at an antiques fair at Bourse today (4/10/16) and almost immediately we spotted an old French woman standing in front of a glass case. The case contained a lot of treasures, but what really caught our attention was a pair of antique opera glasses with in-laid mother-of-pearl on the sides and around the eye pieces. They were beautiful, and since we live in the Opera district this seemed like a perfect purchase for our collection wall niche!
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| We thought these antique opera glasses were beautiful |
3. Statuette of Dionysus (also known as Bacchus)
Our first night in Ventimiglia we had dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant. The food was very good but we were even more impressed with a bottle of wine we bought to go along with our dinner. It was called "Zisola" and it was one of the finest bottles of red wine we've ever tasted.
When I researched the wine later I found this:
"A grand Italian wine family, enchanted by Sicily, discovered the hamlet of Zisola near Noto, an area of rare beauty. Zisola wine is made from traditional "Alberello" (bushy) vines grown in an ancient Sicilian grove."
On our last day in Ventimiglia we were searching for an item for our memory niche when we stumbled upon a statuette of Dionysus (aka Bacchus), the god of grape harvests, wine making, and wine. Seemed like a great item to commemorate our trip.
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| We had some incredible Italian wine in Ventimiglia, so this statuette seemed perfect |
4. Mounted Knight
While staying in the medieval town of Perouges, Melanie and found a little curiosity shoppe with an incredible statue of a mounted knight. This seemed like a perfect memory for a town with so much history!
Unfortunately, when we got home we discovered that the knight is just *barely* too tall to fit in our memory niche. So we moved him to the top of a bookcase in our living room, which is where we keep all of our alcohol.
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| This mounted knight was a little bit too big for our memory niche. |
5. Spyglass
St. Malo used to be a haven for pirates and privateers, so this old spyglass seemed perfect.
It was Melanie's idea to get the little telescope, but I wasn't crazy about the idea at first because it seemed like it would either be really tall and skinny (standing up), or really short and long (laying down). I was looking at models of old pirate ships, until I realized it would be nearly impossible to get one home without breaking it.
Then we found some antique spyglasses that included wooden boxes. Perfect!
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| This antique spyglass looks great in our memory niche. (And it sort of complements our opera glasses.) |
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