The Louvre

Let's backtrack a little from the last post and our last meal in Paris. We had a pretty harrowing taxi ride from the airport to our Airbnb apartment in the 1st arrondissement. After our sleepless red eye flight, we sat in traffic for two hours, meanwhile starving and dehydrated, forked over 86 Euros for the trip, and finally lugged all our stuff to the third floor of said apartment. We rang the bell. No response. J then remembered "3rd floor" actually meant what we consider the 4th floor - duh!

Eventually we staggered over to a nearby cafe, barely conscious at this point. The next thing I knew, a young girl had come to our table and dropped a sheet of newspaper down on my phone, poised to snatch it up right under my very sleepy eyes. Thank god she was not as slick as she could have been and I was just conscious enough to notice what was going on. Our waitress also thankfully came over and shooed her away. A very confused J had no idea what just happened - good thing she didn't go for his phone. I had been warned of the pickpockets but had no idea just how bad it was. I was actually a bit glad this happened - it was a good wakeup call and for the rest of the trip, I guarded my belongings much more tightly.

Our apartment was just a stone's throw away from the Louvre so it felt appropriate to head there on our first day. Of course, one could probably spend weeks just exploring the Louvre. It is incredible and overwhelming. This first set of photos is from my iPhone.

And this set from the x100.

There was some magical light in that place.

L'Arpège

We are back. What a blur of days. And I'm failing in trying to find the words to describe the experience, but what sticks out in memory are the crazy long days and late sunsets, the smell of bread in our Airbnb apartment in the mornings from the bakery below, and the fresh baguettes sticking out of everyone's tote bags (I always imagined this to be true, and I'm happy to report that it is!). We barely dipped our toes in the water on this trip but it was a little taste of Paris that has left me hungering for more. This is probably a poor choice of words, because we were anything but hungry on this trip.

It's hard to believe it was just yesterday we were sitting down to lunch at L'Arpège. (Many many thanks to my buddy Aaron for providing us with the best tips and recs for this trip.) We had really high expectations for this place, and they were far exceeded. The only poor planning on our part was that we had a plane to catch that evening, which meant a leisurely 4-5 hour lunch was just not happening. We wanted to eat as much as we could before running off to the airport - the whole spread is below.

I wish I could tell you what each dish was, but I was in too much of a veggie-induced state of bliss to focus on the components of every dish. It was easily one of the best meals of my life. It's hard to even pinpoint highlights, because it felt like each dish was better and more revelatory than the last. Even J, who scoffs at vegetables normally, says the dish with the baby zucchini and turnips (in the 5th row of photos) was the one of the best things he ate on this entire trip. Although we've had our fair share of excellent food in the city, nothing quite compares with this experience.

(All images taken with the Fuji x100 - which served me quite well on this trip! More non-food posts to come, I promise. ;))

Paris bound

As I'm scrambling to pack, last minute, I wanted to pop in here before I leave. I'm off to Europe for the fist time in my life (it's about DAMN TIME) and will be enjoying the magical city that is Paris. J is most excited about the few meals we have planned, and I am just excited for everything, really. Except, despite my stellar AP French score of 5 (well, this was 7 years ago), I can hardly remember the basic phrases now. Yikes. We will be doing some pretty aggressive eating, so I am skipping packing any kind of dress or skirt that remotely cuts into my waistband. Hopefully if all works out, I can meet up with some friends from over the pond (Siebe? Charlotte? Jinna? :)).

[Above: iPhone photo edited with VSCO CAM]

Also I just wanted to share some work in other places since it'll be quiet on Lingered Upon over the next few days, and you need your daily dose of Alice, right? ;)

Two entries over on the Kinfolk Journal recently - Brooklyn Supper Club and Still House - click through the arrows to see all the photos.

My rum story from the Dominican Republic on Serious Eats.

And I was a contributor to the lifestyle section of the newly launched Verily Magazine. I had a great time collaborating wit Kathy for the duck story (pages 63-65).

And of course, I'll most likely be tweeting and Instagramming on overload while I'm over there. You might want to avoid those outlets if you're hungry...

P.S. Thanks to my lurkers who came out of the shadows on my two-year blogiversary post, whether you emailed me directly or left a comment. Nice to hear from you! 

Orchid heaven

Our hotel in Puerto Plata (Casa Colonial) had orchids growing like weeds in the courtyard area. It was such a sight for sore eyes! Below are some film snaps on the Minolta x370s on Portra 160.

Lingered upon turns two

Tomorrow marks two years since I started this blog. I could have never predicted how attached to this little space I would become. I am incredibly grateful for the online relationships - and real-life relationships - I have formed through blogging and I thank all my readers for sticking with me and interacting with my posts. If you've been a lurker, I'd love to hear from you. :) I also would love any feedback if there are certain things you'd like to see more of on here.

No cakes or candles on this birthday, but a little stop-motion(ish) gif to celebrate instead. (Hopefully the file behaves as it should.)


I had a much more ambitious plan for this animation, but it was one of those things where it looked 10000x better in my head than I could actually execute. In frustration, I tossed the petals to the ground, exclaiming "This is never gonna work!", and realized they were quite beautiful just like that. How about that?
I love that a camera's eye can render an insignificant mess into something more extraordinary. And another major thanks to J who had to deal with me throwing a minor tantrum over the petals. He encouraged me to try my idea again, and so I scaled down my original plan and came out with what you see at the top.


Hope you'll stick around for another year. ;)

Beachy

Ah, the requisite beach photos... I didn't take many but here are the few I did take. I borrowed Jackson's 16-35mm for that one shot down there in b/w. Super fun lens but no match for my beloved 50.

We had dinner at Boca Marina one night - isn't it the most idyllic setting? Looks like something from a dream and this photo doesn't do it justice.

Scenes from santo domingo

Another portion of my Dominican Republic trip involved a brief historical walking tour of Santo Domingo, the capitol and largest city of the DR. I loved the mix of old and new(er) architecture.

We hopped into a cigar shop and got to see some of the hand rolling process - I know nothing about cigars but this was pretty awesome.

Please excuse the brevity of the writing in this post; my mind is mush after a day of shooting. Hopefully the photos speak for themselves. ;)

Tiffany + Ishmael

It's been too long since I've posted an engagement shoot on here! I'm happy to share these photos from a session back in April around the Central Park and Columbus Circle area. Tiffany and Ishmael made my job pretty darn easy. They were great with each other and needed almost no direction. We also made a pitstop at the NYIT where they met during college. Mostly film (Portra 400) below.

Back to tropical island programming soon...