Day 15 - Europe 2010

Well our trip to Paris actually seemed to go by pretty quickly despite the involvement of a bus, a plane, another bus, and a Metro.  We started off at 4:30am and arrived at our hostel in Paris around noon.  Luckily we were able to get some sleep along the way and I also had the time to plan out our time in Paris.  I had wanted more time in Paris but the way the plane tickets worked I ended up with just four days in Paris including our arrival day.  That meant we needed to get on out and start our Paris tour right away!

One thing that was immediately different from Rome was the size!  I had this feeling that it would be big and I was right.  We got our map of the metro system, which in Rome included just two different lines, and saw that Paris had nearly 20!  Sheesh!  So much for our walk-thru of the city like we did with Florence and Rome.  It felt a little overwhelming.

Our first stop was the Latin Quarter where the Pantheon is.  We took the Metro and I actually asked people on the street where the Pantheon was in French and they responded in French and I got enough to get there.  Yeah, I’m proud of my very minimal French skills.  Anyway, this Pantheon was much different than the Pantheon in Rome.  It was very large and not really a church, though it had been so at different times.  Inside are paintings of Roman kings and saints, like Charlemagne and Joan of Arc.  Unfortunately, the handout we got about the murals had very little information, especially about this Genevieve, some lady saint of Paris who I know nothing about.

Well there was also a crypt down below where are buried many notable Frenchmen and women, like Victor Hugo and Marie Curie and men from the revolution like Rousseau and Marat.  Again, it was cool, but all the information was in French!  We thought that was lame because we really wanted to know about these people, especially the names we didn’t know!  So we were a little disappointed in the Pantheon.

But from there we walked up to see Notre Dame and it was very cool, more so than I expected.  Actually it was quite cold as well, cloudy and rainy and I wasn’t expecting that either!  So we were happy to see the line into the church moving quickly.  We really enjoyed the whole interior which had gorgeous rose windows and a number of other stained-glass windows that were interesting to study.  The colors were just beautiful and it was fun to try and identify Bible stories happening in the art of the windows.  Something about the stone archways everywhere was very mystical and enchanting too.  After our tour around the inside, we checked out the archways, or portals, outside of the church and also looked for particular saints or stories in the decoration.  We really enjoyed the whole experience inside and out.

We had one more stop after that, the Pompidou Modern Art Museum.  The museum itself is very different.  The outside has piping running all over the place, almost like an industrial building.  Also on the outside are escalators that go from one floor to the next and this series of escalators is covered by glass so it looks like a clear tube crawling up one side of building.  It’s awesome inside the tube with a view of the city when you start getting up to the fourth or fifth floor.  And then nearby are street performers and a very unique fountain with a bunch of whirly-gigs inside, ya know, the weird modern art stuff.  Oh but that was just the beginning…

We got to the first floor of the modern art museum and it was just bizarre.  Most of the first few rooms were very sexual in content.  We just shook our heads, averted our eyes, and moved on.  Why are there kids here, sheesh!?  But things just got weirder and weirder.  There was one room with a bunch of creepy looking, faceless, life-size “people” set up sitting on these chairs watching a film of a naked woman doing the hula hoop with a ring of barbed wire and cutting herself up.  Yes folks, this really happened.  In another room were a bunch of screens with different videos playing, one of which was a naked woman holding a chicken upside down, laying the chicken’s head on the ground, cutting the head off with an axe, and then holding up the headless body upside down again.  That, my friends, is art!  One of the best was a display of a cabinet with a bunch of trash on the floor in front of it.  Who knew I was making art everytime I get my house dirty?

So I had come to the conclusion that modern art requires substandard craftsmanship and an attachment of some explanation of the artwork that no one can really understand.  I had also come to the conclusion that more than half the artists could use mental treatment and that perhaps it was best that I did not go to an art school after all as I would prefer never to meet the makers of the art I saw there.  Nick was so taken aback by some of the works as they seemed to be of no aesthetic, emotional, or philosophical value.  He said, “I’m going to take a dump on the floor right now and say that it’s art and it should be good enough to go in this museum.”  Well, his idea was not original enough apparently because we actually saw a video of someone taking a poop later on in the museum.  Actually, they showed the person pooping in reverse… yes, I will stop there.

Luckily the next floor up was much more enjoyable.  We saw some Picasso and that seemed very sane compared to the first floor.  There was one guy I really liked named Vassily Kandinsky.  I liked his use of color and shape and I appreciate a good abstract because I’m not very good at it myself.  I also saw the famous Fountain, the urinal of Dada art.

But we still had plenty of weirdness.  There was some type of performance going on at the museum, if you want to call it that.  Everywhere around the museum were these statues of white geese everywhere, just sitting in the middle of the hall or the floor.  Then there were these girls dressed in white with white feathers on their bums walking around the museum doing interesting things.  One girl was looking at works of art and getting very excited about them.  You could hear her throughout the museum making… bedroom… noises.  Who knows what was going on there but they were most likely artists of a nearby school, if Pompidou doesn’t have its own art school anyway, probably trying to make a name for themselves through their weirdness.  We just avoided them as best we could.

So, that was our modern art museum experience which was very strange and affirmed to me that I am not a fan of modern art.  While I did enjoy some of the abstracts and a few Picassos I otherwise was very put off by the whole thing.  It was an interesting trip down insanity lane that makes me glad to have my head screwed on correctly, more or less.  We were looking for a break from the Christian-themed paintings and we definitely got it.

We headed home and were tripped out by how light it was despite the hour.  We didn’t get home until nearly 10pm and it was still plenty light.  It seemed more like 8pm.  How odd!  We got the key to our room – we were not able to actually check into our room earlier because they were cleaning - and as we were opening the door I said to myself, “Please don’t be a crappy room.  Please don’t be a crappy room.”  I really wanted something a little better after our substandard place in Rome.  Well we opened the door to find… two beds!  WHAT!?  I don’t know how it happened because I was sure I had booked us in a six or eight bed room but there were just two beds there!  We were so surprised and so stoked!  Our own place!  How awesome!  And we even have a view of the Eiffel Tower out our window!  Sweet!  So we were very glad to be spending our nights in Paris in a good room at a good hostel.

PHOTOS:

The French Pantheon.  You can see it was windy with my hair blowing around.  We went from hot in Rome to cold in Paris.

The inside of the Pantheon had paintings covering all the walls with some French history.

Our view of the Notre Dame as we walked by.  The church is right on the River Seine.

Good thing we had our rain jackets!  Here is Nick in front of Notre Dame, waiting to get inside.

Here is a little bit of a closer look at the front of the church.  The entryways there are called portals, if I remember correctly.

A closer look at the central portal.  Christ is there, saving some and damning others.

Inside the church were lots of beautiful stained-glass windows.  It added so much to what would have been a very stuffy church otherwise.

A close-up of one of the huge rose windows.  Nick especially enjoyed those.

Now to a whole different direction, on to the Modern Art Museum.  We start off with the funky fountain outside.  It had a bunch of separate little things going.

Here is the building itself, quite odd but interesting.  The tube on the outside has escalators that take you from one floor to the next.  Great views of the city inside.

And so begins the utter weirdness.  This creepy bride was decorated with little dolls and other odd toys.  She was very large too, bigger than Nick, with a creepy little head.

This was an exhibit.  Yes, trash on the floor.  It put me in tears, I felt so inspired.

On to the good stuff.  Here is a Picasso who definitely seemed tame after a walk thru of the other exhibits.

I really liked this one.  Finally some modern art that I like and can appreciate!

I had to post the famous urinal!

This is the epitome of art that I hate.  I mean this thing was dump!  It has no aesthetic appeal and looked like it was thoughtlessly executed.  What the heck?  Why is this here?  You're the reason I was happy to leave the Modern Art Museum!