automne à la place du marché

I like to return to the market place from time to time to capture it in different seasons and different weather.


Today, I was honored to be the subject of a little story in the newspaper about my adventures in Amboise with this blog.  You may read the online version of it here from the web site of La Nouvelle République.  Un grand merci à l'auteur Magalie Basset !


Si vous êtes un visiteur première fois à ce blog, vous pouvez afficher ensemble toutes les vieilles photos (sans les descriptions) sans afficher chaque "post" de blog (qui a le description)  ici.



Update on 16 November 2014 to the original post :

The following is my translation of the Nouvelle République story.  I only made minor changes from the literal translation to make it more readable in English.  I embedded a few notes in brackets.

 “The Loire is magnificent.  In the US, the rivers aren’t like this.  In general, the river banks are private and one can’t have access.”

Everyday Stuart Byrom posts a new image of the town on his blog “Amboise Daily Photo”.  Meeting with an American who has been charmed by the Loire.

The Virginia Creeper that climbs the facade of the Inn of the Priory at Clos Lucé has suddenly taken the colors of the season.  They were blazing with color and turned completely red to the great delight of Stuart Byrom who photographed them and posted them on his blog “Amboise Daily Photo”.  The commentary that he has typed under the image highlights his nostalgia for the North American maples and the incandescent autumns!

When you walk around town, you perhaps may encounter this smiling stroller, always equipped with his camera.  We met briefly on the pedestrian mall where Stuart was witnessing the return of bronze sculptures to the fountain designed by Max Ernst.  Mixing among the crowd, he rapidly photographed the restored works of art. I took him for an art critic who had descended from Paris, but he corrected: “I am an American; I have lived in Amboise 5 years [sic: actually it has been 3 years]; and I have a photo blog.”

The blog is on the City Daily Photo platform where Amboise stands alongside hundreds of cities on all continents (see the sidebar).  Stuart Byrom launched the blog in February 2013.  Starting this hobby in retirement, he is committed to publishing every day of the year a new photo, accompanied by a brief text.  A series of sunsets on the Loire, a series on bridges, Amboise in the snow… This amateur photographer is interested in everything, even little flowers!  That is to say whatever that delights his taste for nature if not to say for contemplation.  This comes after the strain of working many long hours and being too often stressed out when he was an engineer for IBM.

That lasted 33 years, but retirement did arrive and he decided to change his life and to leave North Carolina to head to France.  “I followed my wife who is a lifelong Francophile.”  Elizabeth, who studied at the Sorbonne [in Paris] and was a teacher of French, was the inspiration for this new adventure [a loose translation from the original].  The little apartment that the couple bought in the beginning soon became too confining, so Stuart and Elizabeth went in search of “the region in France best for us”.

Amboise was love at first sight

Amboise emerged to them as a no-brainer.  “It was love at first sight!  It is a tourist destination and a small, comfortable town where I can run and cycle.  And then there is the Loire river.”  It is “lounique” [sic: spelled as understood in French for the English word “unique” as it was horribly mispronounced] he declared with his delicious accent [an ironic way of saying it’s like fingernails on a blackboard].

[the sidebar :]

Milestones

AmboiseDailyPhoto.blogspot.fr   This blog is a little cousin of Paris Daily Photo, launched by a friend of Stuart’s, Eric Tenin, in 2005.  The success of this formula is due to the publishing of a photo every day from the city where you live.  All of these many blogs necessitated the creation of a consolidated web site City Daily Photo.

Here, Amboise stands alongside Stavenger (Norway), Cape Town (South Africa), Chennai (India), and Blois, the only other city represented on City Daily Photo in this region of France.

Magalie Basset