Monet, Anyone?

Colors!
Heheh, I took a picture in the house which was forbidden. The pictures, not the house.
If this doesn't look slightly familiar, you didn't pay attention in art class.
That woman sort of looks like my high school principle from a distance.
Polly wanna baguette?

We went to Monet's Garden at Giverny today. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL, ETC. After taking a train out of Paris* we took a bus to the village of Giverny which was adorable and we had some slightly overpriced, but still delicious food. We got to walk through his house and the gardens and saw the famous lily pond. The house was interesting because, I kid you not, ALL of the walls were covered with Japanese prints, with the exception of the bedroom and the kitchen. That one picture I took inside the house? Imagine those prints except about 20 more all on the same wall, that was the house.

The gardens were really pretty and had tons of different flowers in them, of course. I'm not really a flower person so I didn't get that many pictures of it, but I did take quite a few of the water lily pond. The pond was actually across a road so we had to walk underground to get to it from the main garden. Like most things, the pond was a bit smaller than you expect it to be, but it was still pretty healthy in size. It took us about half an hour to meander around the pathways, but then again, we were stopping to take pictures and had to weave through Swedish girls and prostitots (yes, I spelled that term correctly; Google is your friend if you need a definition, but the portmanteau should be enough to give you a good idea) the whole time. Oy vey.

Overall the place was great, though. I saw a pair of parrots, or pairrot, if you will. The weather was perfect today which was amazing. I got a book about Japanese woodblock prints that was in the Atelier turned Giftshop and managed to get Cathy, Richard, Doreen and I back to the apartment smoothly. I even spoke some French, which I'm getting better at. At least simple but important things are easy enough for me to convey and understand. On a totally unrelated note, I need to fix my posture. It's rather atrocious.

* After getting to the station, we found out that there was a workers strike for the train systems, so none of them were running quite normally, even the Metro was messed up. The ticket machine wasn't giving us what we wanted so we had to wait in line for an hour to talk to a human being to get the right tickets. If it had taken 10 minutes longer we would have missed the train. Why do the French have to protest everything?

Louvre!

Don't bite your fingernails, kids.
Victory of Samothrace.
It's alot smaller than you think it would be.
D'awww, Eros and Psyche.
Just to prove how much of a nerd I am, I took a picture of this Krater because I noticed that all the males had those stick things that kind of look like asparagus. Anyway, I know that in the tradition of the cults of Dionysus, only the female worshippers usually had those sticks (I can't remember what they're called, but they were from a specific plant with some significance to Dionysus) when they went out to the woods to drink and party. So I was intrigued to see a Dionysian cult ceremony depicting only males holding the asperigus things and none of the women. NERD.

Oh lord, I want to live in the Louvre. It has everything I could ever ask for, both as an Artist and a Greco-Roman Amature Mythology Buff. I went yesterday with Richard and Cathy, we left pretty early in the morning so getting through security and getting tickets wasn't all that bad. We went and saw the landmark things first of course, Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, and then we found out there was a section of Oceanic, African, and other Primitive art, so we trekked down to the basement and checked out all that stuff. It was pretty interesting, to get to the primitive section, we had to go through all of the Italian paintings (where the Mona Lisa happens to

be) and we went from CROWDS of people, to having almost the entire place to ourselves. Then we went out for lunch after I checked to make sure my ticket was good for the whole day and I walked them up to Notre Dame. After seeing Our Lady again, we parted ways and I mosied on down to the Louvre for some more picturegazing. Yes, I went alone, taking a nice long walk down the river Seine and it was sooo hot. It just suddenly warmed up here the past few days and I was sweating.

Ok, so I got back to the Louvre, taking the secret speedy entrance that NO ONE uses. Porte des Lions. It's right by the Oceanic exhibit so that's how I found it. Everyone always goes to the Pyramid to get in... SUCKERS HAHA! Anyway, I got back in and had to go through Italian Paintings AGAIN, which was just as crowded, but then I somehow got down to Italian Sculpture and saw some stuff by Michaelangelo and other things that were pretty nifty. Then I went through Greek/Roman/Etruscan art. You wouldn't believe how intricate the sarcophogi the Greeks made are. They're gorgeous. I didn't get too many pictures in after I went through Italian sculpture though, because I saw that my battery was getting low.

After Greek etc. I went through Egyptian Antiquities, which takes up 3 floors I found out. I thought I would never get out of there, and I got lost a few times in Egypt, I'll admit. Pretty much the entire space of Egypt and even Greek/Rome was almost empty. It was like I had the place to myself. I gues that everyone goes to see the Mona Lisa and just overlooks the vast amount of other things that the Louvre has. Pretty much the only time I ran into other people was school tour groups and occasionally another dedicated museum goer like myself (they seemed to all be German, by the way.) After I finally got out of Egypt, I was in Mesopotamia. I can't even tell you how big everything in that exhibit is. I'm talking 10 foot high mosaic lions and 30 tall winged bulls. MASSIVE.

Apres la, I finally got to something that I had been looking for for a while (sadly, Islamic Arts is closed until 2011, which is a shame because I wanted to see that) and that was the French Sculpture section. They have 2 or 3 courtyards in the middle of French Sculpture that are basically just huge sculpture rooms. At this point I was kicking myself for not having charged my camera battery before I went to the Louvre because my battery had pretty much run out halfway through Egypt. I only managed to squeeze in one more picture while I was in FS of a Hyacinth. I have to go back there so I can get in more pictures. Pretty much all of the FS pieces were from Greek/Roman mythology which I drool over (Prometheus, Eros, Hermes, Athena, Hephaestus, Poseidon, Heracles, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, ETC., ETC., ETC.) There were also a couple of St. Sebastians that I didn't get to take pictures of. I did manage to get in 4 different St. Sebastions before my battery died, but I saw at least 6 more after that.

In the FS area, I saw more people drawing there than anywhere else in the Louvre. I would say that about 1/10 statues had someone sitting there drawing it. And there were quite a few statues in the courtyards. I wish I was one of those people, just sitting in the Louvre, drawing or painting whatever I wanted... oh what a nice dream. I would have stayed longer, but alas, the Louvre does close so I had to go home. My metro maps mislead me so I had to try 2 stations before I got the right one, but they were close by and it wasn't much of an issue.

I think this is the longest blog I've written so far. Hahha... if this thing let me post more than 5 pictures at a time it would be MUCH longer. Hehehe... ow... my legs are still sore from all the walking yesterday. I'm used to walking alot now, too.

Tea Time

I have t-shirt tan...
The terrace at the back of the Ambassador's place.
And the Garden
Blub
It's sort of opulent, don't you think?

Arrrrrgh, I wrote up my blog for yesterday just now but did something stupid and it got wiped, anyway...

TODAY:
We went to have tea at the Ambassador's residence which was sponsered by St. Anne's Guild in Association with the American Cathedral of Paris or something like that. There were alot of people there, and security took a while to go through. My name was on a guest list, which made me feel rather fancy. There were two women that spoke, a journalist and a writer. The journalist was American and she talked about some of the war zones that she had been in and stuff like that. The other woman was just awarded the Legion of Honor by France for her work freeing slaves in Africa and other countries. Apparently there are more slaves in the world now than there were 200 years ago, makes you think, doesn't it?

After the speakers, there was tea (but more people went for the champagne, I noticed) and it was delicious. They also had little sandwiches and cookies which served as a sort of afternoon snack. The Ambassador and his wife weren't in town, they're probably getting ready for Dubya's visit this weekend. It was still really neat to see the place though, I don't know when the next time I'll get to be in an Ambassador's residence will be, soooo yeah. That was today.

Montmarte at last

It was sunny today!!
It's called a Diablo Menthe. I need to buy mint sirop now.
HIPPO!
Who doesn't love a flamenco guitarist?
I don't need to tell you what that is.

Finally! We got to go to Montmarte. We took the metro to the bottom of the hill and climbed up the many many many staircases to Sacre Coeur at the summit of Paris. The view is amazing, as it always has been. I only have pictures of the outside of the church because you're not supposed to take pictures on the inside. It was hard to obey that rule, the inside of the church is really something to see. Mom, I was thinking maybe I'd get your Saint Medallion blessed at a cathedral here, but had no idea how to go about that, so I dipped it in some holy water at Sacre Coeur, I figured it would count for something.

After that, we got some lunch and we all had crepes and I got a Diablo Menthe, or a Mint Devil/Devil Mint. It's basically just mint syrup in fizzy water but it was so good. I'm going to be smuggling sirop de menthe and nutella back home it seems... We went through the artist's square and there was art there, go figure. I got a scarf and some art nouveau prints, and I also petted a chat noir! The only cat that I've seen in the whole city, Parisians seem to all be dog lovers. We went by a Dali exhibition that I might just have to check out, and by might just I mean will.

We went down and saw the wall of love that has "I love you" written on it in every single language, even sign language and cuneiform were present. I stopped to listen to some Flamenco Guitar, that was played by that rather attractive gentleman I took a picture of above. There was quite a crowd around him too, it's been a long time since I've heard a guitar played that well. We stood across the street from the Moulin Rouge, which is really nothing but a tourist destination at this point. I think I heard more English today than I have in a very long time.

Tomorrow, the Louvre!

Another wedding

I've finished inking this, but I think it needs more background.
You know that statue called 'The Thinker'? These are by the same guy, Rodin.
Obelisk, you silly thing, you.
Bonjour Roi Henry IV!
Waterfall with little to no falling water. Wait, what?

AAAH, I'm so ditzy sometimes! Today was Sibylle's wedding and I took pictures, but I forgot to put my SD card back in the camera so those pictures are saved to the camera's memory. Anyway, I didn't really do anything yesterday except for a 5 hour Laundrothon. For some reason it takes 3 hours to wash clothes in the machines here. It was cool though, I drew and listened to my iPod and all sorts of stuff like that. I really wish I had remembered to put Beirut on my 'Pod, though, I keep getting it stuck in my head and want to listen to it.

The pictures are just a mash up of some stuff from the past week mostly, of course. We are definitely going to Montmarte tomorrow though, so I should have some fresh material for you. I know I haven't been too consistent with blogging the past few days, but bear with me, the scheduling for stuff is getting unpredictable occasionally.

Anyway, the wedding. Yes. It was another civil ceremony so it was short and sweet. It was in the town hall of St. Cloud which is a cute little village just outside of Paris. For the reception all the appetizers were served on little Chinese soup spoons and they were all so good. My favorite was this thing that was like a beet mousse or something. It was amazingly tasty. Then we had this great sausage soup thing and I can't even describe how good that was, but then the desserts... why does EVERYTHING in this country have to taste so good? It's just not fair.

Lazy

The SD slot is being a frustrating little curmudgeon again, and I don't want to restart the computer right now. I was just going to post some older pictures since I... didn't really do anything today. I read a lot of National Geographics and got bread and lemon tarts with Rob, but other than that... nada. I'm sort of glad I took the day off from running around, actually. It was nice to rest and relax and learn.

Oops

The top!
Pan
View from the top
A close up
More vistas of the city

Ok, so we didn't go on the Montmarte tour... yesterday. Sorry about the delay in this blog, we got home really late last night. Kristen and some of her friends and a bunch their friends went to see the Sex and the City movie so I tagged along. It was pretty good and easy enough to follow even though I never watched the series really. Anyway, instead of the tour (I slept in... again) I went with Kristen and Marshall to do some stuff and then we went to this park in the 19th. It's called the Buttes of somethingerother, but I've seen the park in a couple movies and was excited when I figured out where we were. The place is huge and hilly, which is a rarity for Paris. It was built in the 1800's during the renovation of Paris and it used to be an old quarry/garbage dump. Then they took it and turned it around into a magnificent park. Those wiley French.

Had some delicious crepes yesterday too. I'll have to start importing Nutella when I get home...

I'll post another blog today, about today, hopefully. Cheers!