DON’T ask me how I found myself on a three-day flying junket to Meghalaya, far, far away from Goa in the north-east of India. It’s both an “abode of clouds” and the “Scotland of India”, whatever you prefer. I prefer “abode of clouds” for up hill and down dale Meghalaya - at least in the month of September - is an enchanting heaven of all kinds of clouds…clouds can be so fascinating for they can vary from thick white cumulus to heavy grey-green nimbus, or swiftly flying wispy snowy patches…

PAUL SIGNAC (1863-1935), though fascinated by the work of Monet, moved away from romantic impressionism to create his own brand of “scientific impressionism.” This style of painting is noted for its pointillist brush marks with little dots. A charming, neo-impressionist painting of this genre is his Les Andelys. The Bank (1886, oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm), a landscape painted in the small Norman town of Les Andelys. It captures the glare of the midday sun and what critics called “the division of colour and optical mixes.”

ON THE way to Aix-de-Provence, the birthplace of Paul Cézanne, our guide used the opportunity to give us a brief introduction to Impressionism, the art movement that flourished in France from 1848 to 1914. Until the 1850s, he said, the school of fine arts (École des Beaux-Artes) taught three kinds of painting — religious, historical, and portraits of the rich and famous. The young would-be impressionist painters said they didn’t care for such traditional forms of art but instead went to Montmartre to paint what they saw outside in the country, not in the studio.

ON THE afternoon of September 21 we arrived in Bordeaux, about 310 miles southwest of Paris by the high speed train called TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse), in about three hours. Before checking into our hotel Mercure Chateau Chartrons, Filipe told us the story surrounding the monument in the city plaza called Place des Quinconces, dedicated to the Deputés Girondins.

BY BEN ANTAO

I MUST confess that I was disappointed when I saw the famous painting of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci in the Louvre. It is not the iconic image, but its size that disappointed me. The oil on wood painting measures just 77 x 53 cm, which is less than a metre long and wide. Viewing this portrait after being mesmerised by the huge canvases of The Wedding Feast at Cana by Paolo Caliari Veronese (6.77 x 9.94 m) or The Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Gericault (4.91 x 7.16 m) was a letdown.

MY FASCINATION with the Cathedral of Notre Dame began in the 50s when, as a student, I was reading about Gothic architecture in the University library in Mumbai. From the photo it seemed there was something mystical yet mystifying about the façade of this cathedral. Fifty years later its strangeness may have been unravelled for me, but its mystique remains.

BY BEN ANTAO
THE A-shaped Eiffel Tower rising to a height of 1063 feet looks better and more elegant in photographs than up close in person. This is because distance lends perspective to the view. Prior to flying into Paris, my wife Marinella and I had booked online a dinner cruise along the Seine from the pier at the foot of the Eiffel Tower with a company called Bateaux Parisiens as it would be cheaper. The price was € 70 per person, our first excursion in Paris.

WHAT attracted me to Versailles, more than anything else, was the opportunity to see its fabled gardens. So we decided to fly to Paris a couple of days prior to joining the group, to soak ourselves in art at the Louvre as well as to check out the grand Museum-Palace of Louis XIV (1638-1715). The female attendant at the hotel desk fished out a Metro map of Paris from under the counter, circled a section called Bercy village, told us to take the train at Cour St-Émilion station (about five minutes’ walk from the hotel), get off at Bibliothèque F. Mitterrand, change to another line called the C route, and buy a round-trip ticket (€5.80) for Versailles-Rive Gauche (Château de Versailles). Versailles is about 13 miles southwest of Paris.

THE DOWNTOWN core of the town of Lourdes was packed with pilgrims so much so that our coach had to crawl around the block to find adequate parking space to drop us off near the Grand Hotel Moderne, 21 Avenue B. Soubirous. We spent two nights here. While on the way to the foothills of the Pyrenees where Lourdes is nestled in southwest France

MY WIFE Marinella and I had signed up for a ten-day tour of France with Globus in September 2009. Seeing that two days in Paris with the guided tour wouldn’t be sufficient to cover the essential sights in that eternal city of lights, we flew in from Toronto two days early to explore the museums and the city on our own. After a day at Versailles and another in the vast museum of Louvre, we joined the tour group on September 19 at the hotel Pullman Paris Bercy (1 rue de Libourne) in the southeast on the left bank of Seine. During the drive to dinner at the restaurant Montebello Place in the Latin Quarter, Filipe, the tour guide, told us what we were going to do the next day.