TRIP TO PARIS - DAY THREE

DAY THREE

POMPIDOU

Today it started snowing but only lightly. Since I only did one museum the whole previous day I was determined to do at least the other two large museums today. I made my way over to le Centre Pompidou which is a huge strange building with pipe-like stairwells and walkways all around it, but inside is the National Modern Art museum and many side galleries with special contemporary exhibitions. The main floor of the museum is a massive labyrinthine structure collecting together an amazing selection of modern art.

Here is a small selection of works I noticed from my favorite artists:

Yves Tanguy - This is surrealism!

This is Marcel Duchamp. I know it looks like's he's being
an asshole, but he got away with it, didn't he?

This is an early Jackson Pollack.

This is the most famous Yves Klein work. It is even more
brilliant in person (and he was from Nice). My favorite story
about him is he used to get a whole bunch of stuffy Parisians
to watch him smother beautiful naked women in
blue paint and make them drag themselves over a canvas.
The guy was a savage, enough said.

Now some of the galleries were very interesting. An exhibition showcasing Arman, also from Nice, was very interesting. He started putting random items like string and vacuum cleaners or trash in casings of plexiglass. Later on he started just taking objects like cellos and automobiles and blowing them or destroying them and than arranging them as works of art.

There was also a Piet Mondrian exhibit. He was famous for asking to be moved away from the window in a café once because he hated Nature so much, but come to find out he started out painting nature. As you move through the exhibit you quickly see him move toward abstraction until by the end he's painting only squares and with only the primary colors, black, and white. You can even go into a little "house" he designed that's like living in one of his paintings.

Others though were outrageous or boring. One was all pictures and paintings of female genitalia, because the vagina has been misrepresented guys! One was complaining about how men dominate the art in museums and that we always paint naked women. Maybe we're just better artists? How about that? Ooh, snap! Fight! Fight! Fight! One was a gigantic room with just two tables with little rocks with flies smeared on them and other stupid retarded nonsense. Right. That was the most bogus one of all.

Here's some pictures of Paris covered in snow from atop the museum:

Little Christmas Display. It's hard to see, but they even
put out a row of single roses on the benches!

LE MUSÉE D'ORSAY

Pompidou was not as large as the Louvre, but it was still big. By the time I got out it was about dinner time. I ate somewhere quickly and headed across the river to d'Orsay. It was snowing hard now, but it was strangely warmer than when it was raining. I took some pictures for Mom, since she loves the snow so much:

Here's snow on the bridge leading across the Seine.

Spotlight atop the Eiffel Tower through the "blizzard."

Snow on the rooftops near the river. Sometime I'll take
a ride on the boats, but it was too cold.

Le Musée d'Orsay (with a rhino statue???)

Unfortunately, they are more strict about photos in d'Orsay, but Jon would have loved it because there are a lot of van Goghs. My favorite part was a collection of Gérôme paintings, who I had never heard of before. He paints harems, and Roman gladiators, and the feeding of Christians to lions and cool stuff like that. Most of the museum was taken up by impressionism, though, which usually uses weak pastel colors and looks like they had to be painted real quick and sloppy because the artist was being chased.

DAY FOUR

When I woke up to go home there was a huge layer of snow on the ground. Here's a picture through my hotel window:

I decided since I had to be out of my hotel by noon, but my train didn't leave for several hours I would take one last trip to the Eiffel Tower for some day shots. It was hard to move around with my luggage, but here's me at the Eiffel Tower on Christmas day:

Then Annie and her husband wanted to meet on Christmas for Sushi, but they misunderstood what time I had to leave. My ticket was at 3:46, and they didn't arrive in Montparnasse (which is in southern Paris) until nearly 2:30. The sushi was excellent and they are really fun to hang out with, but I almost missed my train home. Luckily I mentioned the time and they drove, so they were able to swing me over to the train station.

Unfortunately, the train didn't leave the station until after 4 and then took nearly 7 hours to get back to Nice because of the "snow." I did not get back to Nice on Christmas day until midnight! It feels good to be back, though, because its warmer and I know my surroundings and my apartment is almost like my home already.

Hope you had an exciting Christmas, too, and stay tuned for my next adventure!

TRIP TO PARIS - DAY TWO

DAY TWO

THE LOUVRE

The next day it was still raining and cold so I decided to stay inside museums all day. I intended to do both the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay, the two biggest and most famous of them, but the Louvre is so vast it took me 5 hours to get through it. They have everything from halls full of paintings to Egyptian art to sculptures from all centuries and more. Here are some pictures of my favorite sights. Of course, I saw the Mona Lisa, but there is always a crowd of annoying people obsessed with it and snapping pictures so it's hard to get a good look. Not only that, a few years ago some crazy woman cut a hole in it with knife so now you can only get within 10 feet of it and its behind glass.

The Pyramid designed by I. M. Pei (a Chinese-American)
outside the Louvre. You actually walk inside it to go into
the museum.

Nike of Samothrace

To give you an idea, this is not an exhibit. This is just
what the museum looks like.

Ooh! Aah! Ooh! Aah!

This was just really big, that's all.

These were really big.

Big, again.

From inside the Pyramid.

There was a lot more to see, but if you want to see them you'll have to come to Paris yourself. Unfortunately, I took so long here that by the time I ran across the river to the Musée d'Orsay it was closed and then it started to sleet/hail. I dived into the nearest restaurant and tried to get some French cuisine. I ordered bœuf bourguignon, French onion soup (duh!), and crème brûlée. That's it. That's all I did. It was too frickin' cold, man.

Stay tuned for the final installment . . .