So now that we were done with our four day museum pass, we decided to move on to “things Mom did not get a chance to do last time in Paris” and go to one of the famous flea markets in Paris, which have been around since the 1870s. They are a little different than we would think of flea markets in that many of them are actually situated in small store like rooms, instead of just being out in the open on tables. This was probably one of our more adventurous trips since we would be moving way out of our neighborhood almost into the suburbs of Paris. We took the metro, which by now we were pretty familiar with, took our maps and Rick Steves and tried our best not to get lost. After we got out of the Metro station though, I was not too sure of our odds of actually making it to our destination. But after looking at a couple maps we made our way to what looked like the right direction according to our guide book and we were feeling pretty good about it, especially since there was a sign pointing us in the right direction, but after that first sign we were just wandering around in what seemed to be the market knock off area, with people selling cheap clothes, bed sheets, underwear and electronics. Not really the atmosphere we were going for. Finally after looking at the map for the millionth time we found our destination, though we weren’t actually sure which part of the market we were in, but at least we could tell we were in the right place. The markets are known for their antiques and one of the first stalls we came across was one selling old carousel animal, which unfortunately was closed so we could not take a closer look. We peeked in some of the stalls, mainly the ones with paintings as my Dad had instructed us to look for a specific painter while we were there. One stall specialized in old posters, which were fun to look at but super expensive. One thing we noticed is that the sellers did not seem super protective of their wares.
We wandered around some more and found a section that was a little more applicable to our shopping needs, in that we had found the vintage clothing, books and other smaller random antiques. There is something about old magazines, postcards and knickknacks that I just love. My mother sees this stuff more as junk, but I just love the possibilities behind it, seeing all the projects that I could do with everything that I found. Once we got to this section, I found a really cool scarf for 5 euros with a very bold 1960s pattern on it, some old post cards from Wisconsin that some one had sent back to France (I also found some from Denison University, one of the schools I thought about going to). We saw some amazing vintage clothing that was way too small for either of us but was fabulous to just browse through. Mom really liked this one necklace, but the stall was closed so we circled back multiple times till it was finally open again. Unfortunately it was too expensive for her. We also got a book for my Dad of this French comic that he read as a kid, which he actually remembers reading in his youth. As we were leaving we saw this great messenger bag for me, which was not an antique but very useful and something that I needed. Mom also found one of her first purchase; a scarf that was actually remarkably similar to one that a classmate of mine had in Spain. The flea market was a great time, but I just wish we had a better sense of where we were so that we could go to the right places.
We managed to find our way back, tracking back exactly the way we came thankfully. But by this point I was very hungry so we stopped at a restaurant and our waitress was super nice and we got a great meal with a vinaigrette salad with avocado, a steak with fried egg and a chocolate mousse, which was so rich and delicious. It really hit the spot and if we had waited any longer the walk to then next location would have be incredibly difficult and cranky.
We then decided that since we were in the area we would go to Montmartre, the place where all the artists lived and where the basilica church was. It’s on a hill and is the highest point of Paris. I mapped out a route to get us there but eventually we got a little lost. Mom kept wanting just to go to the right since we knew that we had to go up hill, but with the streets being the way they were, sometimes you could get on a really small street that would just end and that wouldn’t even be on the map and I did not want to get more lost than we were. The streets that were not on the map were our downfall. Eventually a man driving stopped and asked if they could help us, who spoke English (yay!). He began to explain where to go but then he decided just to give us a ride there. So my mom jumped in the car but I was a little confused on why she was getting in the car so the guy told me that we were hitch hiking and told me to get in. I was pretty nervous about it, but the guy drove us up in the nicest neighborhood, where people had gardens in Paris, where the rich and famous live. It seemed to be ok so I relaxed a bit and it was nice not to have to walk up that huge hill.
He dropped us off and we went to the basilica and admired the view and all the artists who were working and selling their art. There were a lot of people drawing caricatures and doing really typical drawings/paintings of the Eiffel tower, but some were quite good and more original. Then we went into the basilica and it was very beautiful and they had real candles, which was cool to see after Spain, where they had fake electric candles and those just don’t have the same feel to them. My mom and I lit a small tea light, we could have gotten a big candle but that was a ten-euro donation and that was just too much for us. We sat there for a while and enjoyed the peace of the basilica. Afterward we checked out the artists one more time and then we walked down the hill back to the metro station. We ran into some scammers with the bracelets and I managed to avoid it. W also managed to find the metro stop perfectly but we were so exhausted that we just snacked it out when we got home, interneted and went to bed.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Orsay For The Second Time
Now I am back in the States but I still have many stories to tell so I plan to keep the blog going until I written them all down.
One thing I forgot to write about was what we did after we went to Orsay the day before when we went back to the Tuileries, the gardens outside of the Louvre and we went for a walk in the evening. There is a Ferris wheel on the other side of the park that my Mom really liked and we took some beautiful photos with the sun going down of the statues. I then got some lemon sorbet with mint in it and we just sat and enjoyed ourselves. We saw a man selling small sailboats to float in the small lakes and we were very excited to see this man because my Dad mentioned this to us before we left. It was a great time, because it was quite relaxing.
So today we got started super late, not even setting an alarm, except for the fact that Mom usually wakes up around 10ish and will go on the computer and eventually wake me up and we have our breakfast of fruit and juice and peanut butter sandwiches. So then after we managed to get on our way we walked to Orsay back again to see the rest of the collection. Today we focused on the pre, post and impressionist work and we splurged and got the audio guide of the museum, which of course made our whole visit much longer. I loved getting all those details but I feel like they never have the information on the painting I want. The small ones that are not as famous but they can’t have information on all of them or else we would be there forever instead of just five hours. We started the day with the pre-impressionist and we looked at all the painting that shocked the salons, even though it seemed that every other painting there was rejected by the official art world and shocked audiences and critics. It was funny because we saw a group of French school children on a trip to the museum and it made me wish that I were born in Europe so that when I was in school I could go to museums like that for school trips. I wonder if there is the same resentment of museum trips when you get to go to museums like Orsay.
After the first floor we went up to the restaurant, which was actually part of the hotel that existed when it was still a train station and at the time it was built, for the world fair it was actually quite modern at the time with electric lights and indoor plumbing that was actually just kind of a stopping point for most people taking the train. So the dining room that we ate in was part of the original building and had the original decorations, which were absolutely gorgeous. I had a risotto and this amazing lemon tart and some of my mom’s ice cream, which included some of the best strawberry ice cream I’ve ever had.
We then saw the actual impressionist works which was amazing, of course the same problem of crowds around the most famous, but I saw so many beautiful painting and a couple of Degas sculptures and it was amazing. As Mom and I were wandering around the galleries we saw a couple of people who were dressed in period clothing, complete with hats and makeup. It was as if they stepped out of one of the paintings themselves and decided to wander around the museum. I really wanted to take a picture of them but I felt that would be pretty rude. We also ran into some Canadians who said it was great to hear English, when me and my Mom were talking about paintings, sitting after a couple of hours of walking.
We got to the end of the museum and we looking at one of the stores to see if we could find any Art Deco jewelry for my mom and I was looking at the other stuff they had in the museum shop and I noticed that a lot of the stuff had the Monet bridges painting on them and I hadn’t seen that painting so I decided to go back and try to find it. Then of course I realized that there was a whole other wing of the museum that we had skipped that was most of the post impressionist stuff and so I quickly walked through there while Mom was at the end, which made her worried because I had been gone for so long. I didn’t find the painting- it was probably on loan to another museum. Mom did not find anything, because the bracelet she liked was too small, which was strange because she has tiny wrists. She was having trouble because they thought she was trying to return her audio guide when really she was asking about the bracelet.
By the time we had finished it was closer to five, and we were trying to get to the Rodin museum but we decided that even with taking the Metro that we would get there with enough time so we sat for a while and then we went home and just relaxed. We joked about what we were going to do for the fourth, especially with seeing a “Gad Bless America” sign in one of the tourist shops. We talked about trying to find an American restaurant, saying that we go back to the “Happy Days” diner we saw on our walk on the first day. We didn’t actually end up doing any of that but we spent the rest of the evening napping and interneting.
One thing I forgot to write about was what we did after we went to Orsay the day before when we went back to the Tuileries, the gardens outside of the Louvre and we went for a walk in the evening. There is a Ferris wheel on the other side of the park that my Mom really liked and we took some beautiful photos with the sun going down of the statues. I then got some lemon sorbet with mint in it and we just sat and enjoyed ourselves. We saw a man selling small sailboats to float in the small lakes and we were very excited to see this man because my Dad mentioned this to us before we left. It was a great time, because it was quite relaxing.
So today we got started super late, not even setting an alarm, except for the fact that Mom usually wakes up around 10ish and will go on the computer and eventually wake me up and we have our breakfast of fruit and juice and peanut butter sandwiches. So then after we managed to get on our way we walked to Orsay back again to see the rest of the collection. Today we focused on the pre, post and impressionist work and we splurged and got the audio guide of the museum, which of course made our whole visit much longer. I loved getting all those details but I feel like they never have the information on the painting I want. The small ones that are not as famous but they can’t have information on all of them or else we would be there forever instead of just five hours. We started the day with the pre-impressionist and we looked at all the painting that shocked the salons, even though it seemed that every other painting there was rejected by the official art world and shocked audiences and critics. It was funny because we saw a group of French school children on a trip to the museum and it made me wish that I were born in Europe so that when I was in school I could go to museums like that for school trips. I wonder if there is the same resentment of museum trips when you get to go to museums like Orsay.
After the first floor we went up to the restaurant, which was actually part of the hotel that existed when it was still a train station and at the time it was built, for the world fair it was actually quite modern at the time with electric lights and indoor plumbing that was actually just kind of a stopping point for most people taking the train. So the dining room that we ate in was part of the original building and had the original decorations, which were absolutely gorgeous. I had a risotto and this amazing lemon tart and some of my mom’s ice cream, which included some of the best strawberry ice cream I’ve ever had.
We then saw the actual impressionist works which was amazing, of course the same problem of crowds around the most famous, but I saw so many beautiful painting and a couple of Degas sculptures and it was amazing. As Mom and I were wandering around the galleries we saw a couple of people who were dressed in period clothing, complete with hats and makeup. It was as if they stepped out of one of the paintings themselves and decided to wander around the museum. I really wanted to take a picture of them but I felt that would be pretty rude. We also ran into some Canadians who said it was great to hear English, when me and my Mom were talking about paintings, sitting after a couple of hours of walking.
We got to the end of the museum and we looking at one of the stores to see if we could find any Art Deco jewelry for my mom and I was looking at the other stuff they had in the museum shop and I noticed that a lot of the stuff had the Monet bridges painting on them and I hadn’t seen that painting so I decided to go back and try to find it. Then of course I realized that there was a whole other wing of the museum that we had skipped that was most of the post impressionist stuff and so I quickly walked through there while Mom was at the end, which made her worried because I had been gone for so long. I didn’t find the painting- it was probably on loan to another museum. Mom did not find anything, because the bracelet she liked was too small, which was strange because she has tiny wrists. She was having trouble because they thought she was trying to return her audio guide when really she was asking about the bracelet.
By the time we had finished it was closer to five, and we were trying to get to the Rodin museum but we decided that even with taking the Metro that we would get there with enough time so we sat for a while and then we went home and just relaxed. We joked about what we were going to do for the fourth, especially with seeing a “Gad Bless America” sign in one of the tourist shops. We talked about trying to find an American restaurant, saying that we go back to the “Happy Days” diner we saw on our walk on the first day. We didn’t actually end up doing any of that but we spent the rest of the evening napping and interneting.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Modern Art and Shopping- Too Tired To Think of Something Clever
At this point in our trip I was feeling slightly over stimulated by all the museums and churches that we had seen but we had the museum passes for four day and we didn’t want to waste it. So we decided that it would be best not to go to Versailles, the palace that the Kings eventually lived in because that would be an all day trip, and for some reason that is just doesn’t seem worth it. If it was in Paris I think that we definitely would have made an effort to stop by, but I am not interested enough to spend a whole day there. Instead we decided to basically go the opposite route and see he Pompidou museum, which houses a huge modern art collection.
On our walk we saw a lot of cute little boutiques with my favorite French word in the window, soldes (which means sale). These stores we much different than the ones we had seen on our previous walk, in that they were much more price and style appropriate for me. The other store would have been fun to walk into and look around but way too intimidating to try on anything. This neighborhood seemed much more my style, but we were on a mission and fashion could only pull me so far away from modern art.
It was a bit of a walk but we finally made it to our destination. The building itself was built for the modern art and its architecture reflects its contents. It is made out of glass that curves around the building in big tubes. It kind of reminds me of what people thought the future would look like in the 1950s. The building adds a bit of color by leaving the pipes exposed for different necessities in the building, like water, electricity and the elevator, all color coded based on function. I thought it must be very difficult to keep clean, and my Mom said that the last time she went it was much dirtier.
Then we went inside and had to stop at the café so Mom could get her coffee fix. The interior was very bright with polished metal accents and a lot of color everywhere, including the blue ceiling and the neon signs telling you where everything was. After coffee we made our way to the fourth floor to the permanent exhibit. It was actually really cool because we figured out that the museum was devoting a large part of their permanent collection to women artists. The opened the exhibit by feminizing a lot of famous male modern artists, like Francine Bacon and Annie Warhol on these huge shiny buttons. It was interesting to see, but a lot of female modern art is very political and although I think this is a good step, I think it’s more important to have just a better balance of women artists in a modern collection, rather than just giving them their special women’s section. Since a lot of women’s modern art deals with issues about women and women in art I think the message gets water down when you have them all next to each other. I was certainly glad to see it though, although I wasn’t a fan of all of it obviously. I think that’s why most people don’t like modern art, because they feel afraid to say they don’t like something or that they don’t understand one piece and so they dismiss the whole genre as if it is all something they don’t like or they can’t understand any of it.
Anyway then we moved up onto the second floor, and I found some really great pieces from artists that I had never heard of, like Tamara de Lempicka, Nathalie S. Gontcharova and then some pieces from the masters of the modern like Picasso and Matisse and Colder. There was a patio on the fifth floor with some statues and some great views and sunshine, which is always nice. I’m always a fan of modern art museums but I feel bad if I don’t spend a lot of time looking at every piece because so many people just skim over so many pieces, that I feel as someone who likes modern art that I really have to pay extra attention to everything. This is a hard way to look at every museum, especially one that you are trying to see in a couple of hours. I wish there was a modern museum like that close to me especially since the Pompidou is suppose to have great temporary exhibits, which we did not get a chance to see, since we only had the museum pass.
After the museum we went to go look for somewhere to eat and so we followed the advice of Rick Steve’s again, and looked for the whimsical fountain and ate at one of the restaurants. Unfortunately there are no pictures of the fountain, because at this point the camera ran out of batteries (our only time this happened in Paris, which I think is pretty good). I was actually using my parents’ camera, and this made me realize more than ever that I need to get a new camera with better shake protection. Even though my camera is only a couple years old, pictures inside or without the flash just don’t come out like they do on the new cameras. I was fading pretty fast at this point but I got a really great dish of chicken and chanterelle mushrooms and rice. It was pretty heavy but I was hungry and then I got some coffee and that perked me right up. I’m not quite the addict that Mom is but I am definitely a convert.
Then we were done with museums (at least for the afternoon, I mean what else would we do on vacation without art museums??) but now it was time for shopping! We went to a couple stores and some were more successful than others. I got a pair of flats for 10 euros (which is about 14 dollars) and some other great finds. It was a little awkward because we didn’t have our shopping vocabulary and we were warned in the guidebooks that it was a little different in the boutiques, so we tried to follow what other people are doing. The only mistake I made was going into the wrong dressing room, because it was connected to the office, so that wasn’t that bad.
After that we went back to the room for a bit and then we still had some energy so we decided to do a preview of the Orsay Museum, since it was open late that day. So we walked down there and saw a bit of Max Ernst’s illustrations and all of the Art Deco stuff, which was mainly furniture, glass work and ceramics. This was great because we had a limited amount of time but we knew we were coming back, so we didn’t feel like we had to rush through anything. So we could just stop and peek at stuff, like the Klimpt painting. I really enjoy the Art Deco style and they would set up entire rooms of artifacts and it was amazing to look at (and imagine actually living in a set
(I'm actually on my way home here so I'm feeling really tired because it's super late back in Paris but I still have my flight back to Milwaukee... I'm trying not to sleep though because I want to overcome jet lag)
On our walk we saw a lot of cute little boutiques with my favorite French word in the window, soldes (which means sale). These stores we much different than the ones we had seen on our previous walk, in that they were much more price and style appropriate for me. The other store would have been fun to walk into and look around but way too intimidating to try on anything. This neighborhood seemed much more my style, but we were on a mission and fashion could only pull me so far away from modern art.
It was a bit of a walk but we finally made it to our destination. The building itself was built for the modern art and its architecture reflects its contents. It is made out of glass that curves around the building in big tubes. It kind of reminds me of what people thought the future would look like in the 1950s. The building adds a bit of color by leaving the pipes exposed for different necessities in the building, like water, electricity and the elevator, all color coded based on function. I thought it must be very difficult to keep clean, and my Mom said that the last time she went it was much dirtier.
Then we went inside and had to stop at the café so Mom could get her coffee fix. The interior was very bright with polished metal accents and a lot of color everywhere, including the blue ceiling and the neon signs telling you where everything was. After coffee we made our way to the fourth floor to the permanent exhibit. It was actually really cool because we figured out that the museum was devoting a large part of their permanent collection to women artists. The opened the exhibit by feminizing a lot of famous male modern artists, like Francine Bacon and Annie Warhol on these huge shiny buttons. It was interesting to see, but a lot of female modern art is very political and although I think this is a good step, I think it’s more important to have just a better balance of women artists in a modern collection, rather than just giving them their special women’s section. Since a lot of women’s modern art deals with issues about women and women in art I think the message gets water down when you have them all next to each other. I was certainly glad to see it though, although I wasn’t a fan of all of it obviously. I think that’s why most people don’t like modern art, because they feel afraid to say they don’t like something or that they don’t understand one piece and so they dismiss the whole genre as if it is all something they don’t like or they can’t understand any of it.
Anyway then we moved up onto the second floor, and I found some really great pieces from artists that I had never heard of, like Tamara de Lempicka, Nathalie S. Gontcharova and then some pieces from the masters of the modern like Picasso and Matisse and Colder. There was a patio on the fifth floor with some statues and some great views and sunshine, which is always nice. I’m always a fan of modern art museums but I feel bad if I don’t spend a lot of time looking at every piece because so many people just skim over so many pieces, that I feel as someone who likes modern art that I really have to pay extra attention to everything. This is a hard way to look at every museum, especially one that you are trying to see in a couple of hours. I wish there was a modern museum like that close to me especially since the Pompidou is suppose to have great temporary exhibits, which we did not get a chance to see, since we only had the museum pass.
After the museum we went to go look for somewhere to eat and so we followed the advice of Rick Steve’s again, and looked for the whimsical fountain and ate at one of the restaurants. Unfortunately there are no pictures of the fountain, because at this point the camera ran out of batteries (our only time this happened in Paris, which I think is pretty good). I was actually using my parents’ camera, and this made me realize more than ever that I need to get a new camera with better shake protection. Even though my camera is only a couple years old, pictures inside or without the flash just don’t come out like they do on the new cameras. I was fading pretty fast at this point but I got a really great dish of chicken and chanterelle mushrooms and rice. It was pretty heavy but I was hungry and then I got some coffee and that perked me right up. I’m not quite the addict that Mom is but I am definitely a convert.
Then we were done with museums (at least for the afternoon, I mean what else would we do on vacation without art museums??) but now it was time for shopping! We went to a couple stores and some were more successful than others. I got a pair of flats for 10 euros (which is about 14 dollars) and some other great finds. It was a little awkward because we didn’t have our shopping vocabulary and we were warned in the guidebooks that it was a little different in the boutiques, so we tried to follow what other people are doing. The only mistake I made was going into the wrong dressing room, because it was connected to the office, so that wasn’t that bad.
After that we went back to the room for a bit and then we still had some energy so we decided to do a preview of the Orsay Museum, since it was open late that day. So we walked down there and saw a bit of Max Ernst’s illustrations and all of the Art Deco stuff, which was mainly furniture, glass work and ceramics. This was great because we had a limited amount of time but we knew we were coming back, so we didn’t feel like we had to rush through anything. So we could just stop and peek at stuff, like the Klimpt painting. I really enjoy the Art Deco style and they would set up entire rooms of artifacts and it was amazing to look at (and imagine actually living in a set
(I'm actually on my way home here so I'm feeling really tired because it's super late back in Paris but I still have my flight back to Milwaukee... I'm trying not to sleep though because I want to overcome jet lag)
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Pictures!!
1. Me in the L'orangerie next to a Didier Paquinon painting.
2. Mom and I on the Seine before our boat tour. You can kind of see the dock behind us on the right, with all the lights.
3. Me on the Left Bank in front of one of the booksellers stalls.
4. Me in front of Notre Dame, our first major stop in Paris
5. The Eiffel Tower
at night from the boat tour.
Where are we going next? Back to the Lady’s Butt- The Beginning of My Museum Tour of Paris
I think I can begin each blog post from Paris saying that we begin each day starting out later than we want to. We set our alarms with the best of intentions but something always gets in the way, the first day we went out we forgot our camera. We set our alarms for 8:30, which was just too ambitious, and we ended up getting up at 9:30 and leaving around 10:30. Then we had to stop and get coffee or my Mom would not be able to function, so we went to the place we had gone the day before, but this time there was no space at the bar so we sat at a table. A fun cultural fact we learned is they charge you twice as much for a cup of coffee when you sit at a table, for the ambiance! My mother was not happy about this since the coffee there was fairly expensive to begin with. It’s one of those things we will laugh about later, but it was hard to let go (I had one of those today so look out for it in later blog posts! Look at me, creating suspense). Then we were on our way to the first stop of the day- the Louvre!
The Louvre is the magnificent national museum of France and it is the most visited museum in the world. The building itself is almost as magnificent as the art inside of it as it was once a palace in the 12th century. Once a new king moved in there he would add on to the building, which makes it perfect for an art museum. Eventually it was left for Versaille and was opened to the public in 1793 so that everyone could enjoy the royal art collection. More recently in the ‘90s another entrance was built by the American architect I.M. Pei that is a big glass pyramid with the lobby underneath and a small pyramid next to it. It was constructed to help handle the large masses of people coming to the museum everyday. Not everyone likes the pyramid entrance, partly because they say it does not fit with the rest of the architecture and that it is difficult to maintain because it is glass but I like it and I think it is a cool contrast with its surroundings.
We had a bit of trouble finding the right entrance, because of our museum passes we could use the group entrance and we could avoid the huge line through the pyramid for people who were buying tickets. But we found it all right and entered into the museum only to find it packed with people. It turns out that Wednesday is one of the busiest days for the Louvre so it was us and thousands of other looking and jostling in front of some amazing pieces of art, which I found frustrating because when I go to art museums I actually want to look at the art. I don’t just want to see the famous stuff and take a picture of it. I don’t just want to stare at it for two seconds and then move on. If I wanted those things I would stay at home and look at art books (because those reproductions will be better than anything you can get on a camera). I want to see the parts that you can’t get from reproductions, which is somewhat hard for the most famous parts of the Louvre.
It started out a little rocky because we were following the Rick Steve’s free audio guide (which was great!!) and we could not find the first room. It was especially hard because my mother and I are both severely directionally challenged, there is a language barrier and the hordes of other tourists that obscure signs, stand right in your way and devour whole works of art… It turns out in the end that the first room (Pre-Greek art) was closed, which was particularly sad for me because I had just studied those works in my Art History 101 class.
After a rocky start we actually had a great day. We saw many really famous works, like the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory, the Mona Lisa (which had such a crazy group in front of it I took a picture of the group and the painting). We also made a detour to see some of the things I studied like Roman painting, an Etruscan sarcophagus and if we go back on Sunday (it’s free on the first Sunday of the month along with many other museums) we plan to see some of the other more ancient works, especially from Egypt and things like the Code of Hammurabi.
After our tour we were exhausted and hungry so we decided to just stay in the Louvre and eat lunch. Usually the big museums have great food that is pretty reasonably priced so it is easier to just eat there then to have to look for a place to eat outside. We did have to wait quite a while to pay for our food but when we sat down we realized there was free refillable pitchers of water, which doesn’t seem like that big of deal but we always get really dehydrated and in restaurants they will usually only give you one small glass of water, unlike the States where they bring you water till you burst. So we were very content with our meal and we fill up our water bottle and then went back out into the heat. It has been unusually hot in Paris according to most of the people we talked to.
We then decided to take a break from the artwork and sit outside in the gardens right outside the Louvre called the Tuileries, which was a really nice break. There are a couple of fountains (with really filthy water) and a ton of statues and a wide long path that leads to another pond where people race boats, according to my Dad. There are no benches but instead they have metal chairs, which can be moved and rearranged, and my Mom and I found two in a shady spot and commenced with people watching and one of our favorite hobbies, judging what people are wearing. We never do it meanly and a lot of the times we are looking for ideas for ourselves but we certainly have a lot of fun.
Once we are ready we move on to the next museum at the end of the park, Musée de l'Orangerie, which is a very small (compared to the Louvre) museum dedicated to the impressionist painters. I really enjoyed this museum at first partially because I could actually look at the artwork up close. They had a great temporary exhibit on a current artist, Didier Paquignon who lived in both Spain and Paris, which you could really see in his artwork that I loved. His colors were very Spanish and his style was very impressionist and he did a lot of different types, landscapes, portraits a series on the metro.
We then moved on to the more famous dead impressionists, which I enjoyed but the last part that we visited was most memorable; Monet’s Water lilies, 8 of the series in a two circular room that was built specifically to house these paintings. When I first saw them though, I was a tiny bit disappointed solely for the reason that the last time my mother came to Paris 14 years ago, she told me about this room and so as a child I had imagined a floor to ceiling room painting with only holes for the door. Of course reality cannot compete with a 6-year-old’s imagination but it was still pretty amazing. We sat there for a while and then we went home. It was a fabulous day!!
The Louvre is the magnificent national museum of France and it is the most visited museum in the world. The building itself is almost as magnificent as the art inside of it as it was once a palace in the 12th century. Once a new king moved in there he would add on to the building, which makes it perfect for an art museum. Eventually it was left for Versaille and was opened to the public in 1793 so that everyone could enjoy the royal art collection. More recently in the ‘90s another entrance was built by the American architect I.M. Pei that is a big glass pyramid with the lobby underneath and a small pyramid next to it. It was constructed to help handle the large masses of people coming to the museum everyday. Not everyone likes the pyramid entrance, partly because they say it does not fit with the rest of the architecture and that it is difficult to maintain because it is glass but I like it and I think it is a cool contrast with its surroundings.
We had a bit of trouble finding the right entrance, because of our museum passes we could use the group entrance and we could avoid the huge line through the pyramid for people who were buying tickets. But we found it all right and entered into the museum only to find it packed with people. It turns out that Wednesday is one of the busiest days for the Louvre so it was us and thousands of other looking and jostling in front of some amazing pieces of art, which I found frustrating because when I go to art museums I actually want to look at the art. I don’t just want to see the famous stuff and take a picture of it. I don’t just want to stare at it for two seconds and then move on. If I wanted those things I would stay at home and look at art books (because those reproductions will be better than anything you can get on a camera). I want to see the parts that you can’t get from reproductions, which is somewhat hard for the most famous parts of the Louvre.
It started out a little rocky because we were following the Rick Steve’s free audio guide (which was great!!) and we could not find the first room. It was especially hard because my mother and I are both severely directionally challenged, there is a language barrier and the hordes of other tourists that obscure signs, stand right in your way and devour whole works of art… It turns out in the end that the first room (Pre-Greek art) was closed, which was particularly sad for me because I had just studied those works in my Art History 101 class.
After a rocky start we actually had a great day. We saw many really famous works, like the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory, the Mona Lisa (which had such a crazy group in front of it I took a picture of the group and the painting). We also made a detour to see some of the things I studied like Roman painting, an Etruscan sarcophagus and if we go back on Sunday (it’s free on the first Sunday of the month along with many other museums) we plan to see some of the other more ancient works, especially from Egypt and things like the Code of Hammurabi.
After our tour we were exhausted and hungry so we decided to just stay in the Louvre and eat lunch. Usually the big museums have great food that is pretty reasonably priced so it is easier to just eat there then to have to look for a place to eat outside. We did have to wait quite a while to pay for our food but when we sat down we realized there was free refillable pitchers of water, which doesn’t seem like that big of deal but we always get really dehydrated and in restaurants they will usually only give you one small glass of water, unlike the States where they bring you water till you burst. So we were very content with our meal and we fill up our water bottle and then went back out into the heat. It has been unusually hot in Paris according to most of the people we talked to.
We then decided to take a break from the artwork and sit outside in the gardens right outside the Louvre called the Tuileries, which was a really nice break. There are a couple of fountains (with really filthy water) and a ton of statues and a wide long path that leads to another pond where people race boats, according to my Dad. There are no benches but instead they have metal chairs, which can be moved and rearranged, and my Mom and I found two in a shady spot and commenced with people watching and one of our favorite hobbies, judging what people are wearing. We never do it meanly and a lot of the times we are looking for ideas for ourselves but we certainly have a lot of fun.
Once we are ready we move on to the next museum at the end of the park, Musée de l'Orangerie, which is a very small (compared to the Louvre) museum dedicated to the impressionist painters. I really enjoyed this museum at first partially because I could actually look at the artwork up close. They had a great temporary exhibit on a current artist, Didier Paquignon who lived in both Spain and Paris, which you could really see in his artwork that I loved. His colors were very Spanish and his style was very impressionist and he did a lot of different types, landscapes, portraits a series on the metro.
We then moved on to the more famous dead impressionists, which I enjoyed but the last part that we visited was most memorable; Monet’s Water lilies, 8 of the series in a two circular room that was built specifically to house these paintings. When I first saw them though, I was a tiny bit disappointed solely for the reason that the last time my mother came to Paris 14 years ago, she told me about this room and so as a child I had imagined a floor to ceiling room painting with only holes for the door. Of course reality cannot compete with a 6-year-old’s imagination but it was still pretty amazing. We sat there for a while and then we went home. It was a fabulous day!!
Thursday, July 2, 2009
And On The Left You Will See… My House
Now we have been in Paris for a couple days and I am having a wonderful time. I had a bit of difficultly adjusting since I know only a few key phrases in French, that coming from a place where I could basically communicate if I was lost or ordering in a restaurant was difficult. Although according to the internets i.e. facebook people really seem to like Paris over Madrid, since it got “liked” five times and Madrid got zero. I can’t really say which city I like better yet but I think Madrid will always have a place in my heart since I can (to some extent) speak the local language.
Annnyway we arrived at the Madrid airport with plenty of time to spare from our hotel. At this point it was just my mom and I because my dad had taken an earlier flight back to the States through London. For all of us who don’t have to get back to work, we were off for 8 days in Paris. Unfortunately something I ate disagreed me so I was making a lot of bathroom trips, but by the time I got to Paris I was feeling much better. (I’m thinking it was the salad at the Prado, it had a lot of shellfish in it.) We were actually flying through Olry instead of Charles Degal so it was much easier for us to navigate except for the fact that they only had one carousel for our section of the airport so there were several flights on one carousel and so we had to wait in this huge crowd for our bags, which thankfully both arrived. I think our French would be severely stretched if we lost our bags.
We took a cab to our hotel, which our cab driver did not know, so that made mom a little nervous but I was frantically trying to pick up some phrases from the book, so I was not really aware of it. The hotel is in a great location, very close to the Louve and other cultural sites but not directly on the busy street. One thing that was new for me is that when we leave the hotel we leave the key at the front desk. Our room it tiny, about half the size of my double at Dickinson in Goodyear, so there is basically room for the two single beds, a small closest and the bedside tables. The bathroom is very nice, but now we have a leak from the ceiling, so that is a little unfortunate. When we first got here I was just feeling under the weather from being sick and nervous and Mom suggested that we go out and get some dinner, which actually helped quite a bit. Thankfully the menu had an English translation and we sat outside, bumping elbows with other tourists and Parisians (literally, the tables outside are ridiculously close together). I got roasted chicken with lightly fried zucchini and a tower type salad with tomato, eggplant and cheese and a bit of lettuce at the top. It was delicious and just what I needed. Then we went for a bit of a walk around our neighborhood and saw all the shops and cafes that were close to us. We also stopped in a small grocery store and got some cheese, fruit and crackers, which was perfect for breakfast and lunch. Unfortunately once we got back into the room we’ve noticed that there was a sign that said “no outside food or drink in the room” even though we have a mini bar in the room. So while we are in the room we store stuff in the fridge but when we go out we hide stuff in our suitcases and under our clothes and secretly sneak out our garbage in tote bags. We feel very silly about it all, but the city is so expensive and this is a really cheap easy way to eat before we go out. Now we probably eat out one meal at a time and the rest we just snack it out.
The next day we woke up kind of later than we wanted and we decided to do the historic walk of Paris that was outlined in our guidebook (Rick Steve’s). It was amazing especially since we downloaded a free podcast guide to the walk, which was a lot of information about plazas and the streets itself that you never really have an audio guide for. The day started kind of slow because we didn’t really know where we were going, so we slowly walked along looking for a metro stop. We eventually found a metro stop but then it took us another fifteen minutes to by metro tickets, only to realize that we were close enough to walk to our first place on the tour, so that seemed kind of silly but it was good to get oriented.
We started this part of the day at Norte Dame and by the time we got there it was around mid-day. We got museum passes for four days, which means that we basically are covered for all the major museums that we go to and we can use the group entrance, which means shorter lines. It also is for some more obscure museums like the post office and stamp museum and the ceramics museum (both of which I would like to go to but I don’t think my Mother would be interested in the stamp museum and the ceramics museum is outside of Paris and would be difficult for us to get to). Notre Dame was amazing of course both inside the cathedral and then the view from the tower. Only I went up in the tower because my Mom saw it last time she came and there was a long wait and it was a pretty tight area and sometimes we both get claustrophobic. Even at the end of the hike up the stairs I was getting a little freaked out because the stairs really narrow and they feel like they go on forever. But it was totally worth it to see the views, the gargoyles and statues and the bell. That took a really long time to the point where Mom started worrying about me but there was no where else for me really to go. Afterwards we sat outside and ate a little snack that we brought including yogurt and almonds under the statue of Charlemagne and it was perfect. We then saw point zero which was the center of France and was the center of Paris thousands of years ago.
After Notre Dame we went to the Deportation Memorial, which was for the 200,000 people who were deported during World War II by the Nazis. It was really stark and grim; the architect built it so the only thing you could see was the sky and the sea. Paris really disappears when you enter into the memorial and then there is an internal part with 200,000-lit crystals and an eternal frame.
We then walked along the left bank of the river and looked at all the people selling used books and by the St. Julien-le-Pauvre, which has some middle age houses around it. Our next stop was The Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, which is a famous English second hand bookstore, which many famous writers visited while they lived in Paris like James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Erza Pound. We walked through the Latin Quarter, which was named after the intellectuals who communicated in Latin at the University of Paris. We walked past two squares, St. Michel, where there is a statue of St. Michel fighting a demon, and many students and political uprising happened there and St. André-des-Arts.
We had two more stops along our walk. My favorite place that we went was Sainte-Chapelle, which was built by Louis III to house the “true” crown of thorns. It was pretty small but the second floor was basically full of stain glass windows and it was awe-inspiring. Lastly we went to the Conciergerie, which was the famous prison where people were kept before they were guillotine and they had a replica of Marie Antoinette’s cell. By this time we were totally exhausted so we crossed the Seine and headed home for a nap.
We got up and went down the block to another little café close to our hotel. It was a very nice leisurely dinner which Mom and I spent people watching and commenting on how nice (or not so nicely people were dressed). I got quiche de jour with tuna and mom got a shrimp Cesar salad. After dinner we went back to Pont Nour the bridge and we took a nighttime sight seeing cruise. At this time it was about 10:30 and so it was getting pretty dark so some of the photos we took didn’t really turn out but it was a very relaxing way to see the sights because we didn’t have to worry about navigation. It was also a good way to orient around the city. Our tour guide spoke in both French and English but her English was really hard to understand but she did point out her house on the tour (hence the title of my post).
There is some stuff I missed here in my blog- my last couple days in Malaga, Toledo and Madrid, but I will get to those soon!
Annnyway we arrived at the Madrid airport with plenty of time to spare from our hotel. At this point it was just my mom and I because my dad had taken an earlier flight back to the States through London. For all of us who don’t have to get back to work, we were off for 8 days in Paris. Unfortunately something I ate disagreed me so I was making a lot of bathroom trips, but by the time I got to Paris I was feeling much better. (I’m thinking it was the salad at the Prado, it had a lot of shellfish in it.) We were actually flying through Olry instead of Charles Degal so it was much easier for us to navigate except for the fact that they only had one carousel for our section of the airport so there were several flights on one carousel and so we had to wait in this huge crowd for our bags, which thankfully both arrived. I think our French would be severely stretched if we lost our bags.
We took a cab to our hotel, which our cab driver did not know, so that made mom a little nervous but I was frantically trying to pick up some phrases from the book, so I was not really aware of it. The hotel is in a great location, very close to the Louve and other cultural sites but not directly on the busy street. One thing that was new for me is that when we leave the hotel we leave the key at the front desk. Our room it tiny, about half the size of my double at Dickinson in Goodyear, so there is basically room for the two single beds, a small closest and the bedside tables. The bathroom is very nice, but now we have a leak from the ceiling, so that is a little unfortunate. When we first got here I was just feeling under the weather from being sick and nervous and Mom suggested that we go out and get some dinner, which actually helped quite a bit. Thankfully the menu had an English translation and we sat outside, bumping elbows with other tourists and Parisians (literally, the tables outside are ridiculously close together). I got roasted chicken with lightly fried zucchini and a tower type salad with tomato, eggplant and cheese and a bit of lettuce at the top. It was delicious and just what I needed. Then we went for a bit of a walk around our neighborhood and saw all the shops and cafes that were close to us. We also stopped in a small grocery store and got some cheese, fruit and crackers, which was perfect for breakfast and lunch. Unfortunately once we got back into the room we’ve noticed that there was a sign that said “no outside food or drink in the room” even though we have a mini bar in the room. So while we are in the room we store stuff in the fridge but when we go out we hide stuff in our suitcases and under our clothes and secretly sneak out our garbage in tote bags. We feel very silly about it all, but the city is so expensive and this is a really cheap easy way to eat before we go out. Now we probably eat out one meal at a time and the rest we just snack it out.
The next day we woke up kind of later than we wanted and we decided to do the historic walk of Paris that was outlined in our guidebook (Rick Steve’s). It was amazing especially since we downloaded a free podcast guide to the walk, which was a lot of information about plazas and the streets itself that you never really have an audio guide for. The day started kind of slow because we didn’t really know where we were going, so we slowly walked along looking for a metro stop. We eventually found a metro stop but then it took us another fifteen minutes to by metro tickets, only to realize that we were close enough to walk to our first place on the tour, so that seemed kind of silly but it was good to get oriented.
We started this part of the day at Norte Dame and by the time we got there it was around mid-day. We got museum passes for four days, which means that we basically are covered for all the major museums that we go to and we can use the group entrance, which means shorter lines. It also is for some more obscure museums like the post office and stamp museum and the ceramics museum (both of which I would like to go to but I don’t think my Mother would be interested in the stamp museum and the ceramics museum is outside of Paris and would be difficult for us to get to). Notre Dame was amazing of course both inside the cathedral and then the view from the tower. Only I went up in the tower because my Mom saw it last time she came and there was a long wait and it was a pretty tight area and sometimes we both get claustrophobic. Even at the end of the hike up the stairs I was getting a little freaked out because the stairs really narrow and they feel like they go on forever. But it was totally worth it to see the views, the gargoyles and statues and the bell. That took a really long time to the point where Mom started worrying about me but there was no where else for me really to go. Afterwards we sat outside and ate a little snack that we brought including yogurt and almonds under the statue of Charlemagne and it was perfect. We then saw point zero which was the center of France and was the center of Paris thousands of years ago.
After Notre Dame we went to the Deportation Memorial, which was for the 200,000 people who were deported during World War II by the Nazis. It was really stark and grim; the architect built it so the only thing you could see was the sky and the sea. Paris really disappears when you enter into the memorial and then there is an internal part with 200,000-lit crystals and an eternal frame.
We then walked along the left bank of the river and looked at all the people selling used books and by the St. Julien-le-Pauvre, which has some middle age houses around it. Our next stop was The Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, which is a famous English second hand bookstore, which many famous writers visited while they lived in Paris like James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Erza Pound. We walked through the Latin Quarter, which was named after the intellectuals who communicated in Latin at the University of Paris. We walked past two squares, St. Michel, where there is a statue of St. Michel fighting a demon, and many students and political uprising happened there and St. André-des-Arts.
We had two more stops along our walk. My favorite place that we went was Sainte-Chapelle, which was built by Louis III to house the “true” crown of thorns. It was pretty small but the second floor was basically full of stain glass windows and it was awe-inspiring. Lastly we went to the Conciergerie, which was the famous prison where people were kept before they were guillotine and they had a replica of Marie Antoinette’s cell. By this time we were totally exhausted so we crossed the Seine and headed home for a nap.
We got up and went down the block to another little café close to our hotel. It was a very nice leisurely dinner which Mom and I spent people watching and commenting on how nice (or not so nicely people were dressed). I got quiche de jour with tuna and mom got a shrimp Cesar salad. After dinner we went back to Pont Nour the bridge and we took a nighttime sight seeing cruise. At this time it was about 10:30 and so it was getting pretty dark so some of the photos we took didn’t really turn out but it was a very relaxing way to see the sights because we didn’t have to worry about navigation. It was also a good way to orient around the city. Our tour guide spoke in both French and English but her English was really hard to understand but she did point out her house on the tour (hence the title of my post).
There is some stuff I missed here in my blog- my last couple days in Malaga, Toledo and Madrid, but I will get to those soon!
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